James Potter and the Necklace of Light
by superkatie12321
Summary: [COMPLETE] James and his best friend Sirius arrive at Hogwarts and have a brilliant first year! The first story in the James Potter septology
1. Chapter 1

HI! I'm Katie and a while ago me and my friend Elaine wrote a Harry Potter fanfic called James Potter and the Shrieking Shack, which was set in James' seventh year at Hogwarts. We then thought that we should try and write the whole septology, sad I know! So we started from the beginning! We've tried to keep the characters as in character as possible, it's hard because we haven't really heard much about them from JKR! It is also kinda AU because Sirius has a twin and they have a younger brother, but there's no reason that couldn't be real. Ok I'll shut up now! Here is their first year!

Disclaimer: I don't own much of it but some of it is mine!!!! Mr and Mrs Brown are mine as well as Helen Waxen, Rose Evans, Robert Evans, Caroline Hawker, Shirley Potter, Edward Potter, Gemini Black, Aries Black, Katie Felton, Kate Thompson, Robyn Howe, actually there's quite a few characters I own! So if you don't recognise the character or situation then it belongs to Elaine and me! 

Chapter 1

The town of Little Whinging was a lovely place. You couldn't find a nicer community however hard you might look. Children freely played into the streets without their parents worrying, people would talk to each other to and from work and generally everyone got along with one another.

There were however a few exceptions to this rule, for example, Mr and Mrs Brown who lived on the corner of Wisteria Walk. Mrs Brown was a gossip, but no one paid attention to a word she said. They just smiled, nodded and went about their business. Mr Brown was another matter all together. He was terrifying. The small children wouldn't go near his house and the older generations made up stories about him. Children had contests to see who could get closest to his house before he came out and shook his walking stick at them.

He was a very angry man and had had a long and eventful life. It wasn't his fault that he hated children, he had just had some bad run ins in the past with people who stereotyped him as the slow, friendly, old man. From then on he had given up talking sense into them and had started his discrimination of all young people. Young people being anyone under thirty.

Lily Evans was one young person who was particularly afraid of Mr Brown. He seemed to get pleasure out of making her feel terrible about herself. Whenever she walked past his house, which was usually twice a day, to and from school, he would make rude comments about her red hair and freckles. But that wasn't what annoyed Lily, no, what annoyed her was that he wouldn't sing anything but praise to her sister, Petunia. Whenever they walked past and he was outside, pretending to trim his hedge or something, it was always "hear you're getting good grades at school Petunia, shame about your no good sister, disgrace she is, absolute disgrace." 

It made Lily furious. And you could tell when Lily was mad. Her face turned the same colour as her hair. You could almost see the smoke coming out of her ears. This seemed to happen whenever she walked down Wisteria Walk.

It wasn't true either, none of it was. Lily was a clever girl and Petunia was, well, not so bright. The only subject at school that Petunia was any good at was Geography, and that was only because all it consisted of was colouring in maps. No, Lily excelled in every academic subject but Mr Brown didn't seem to see this. He was a really bitter old man.

"See you tonight!" said Petunia to her friend Helen Waxen. "Right! You!" she turned to her sister, Lily could see the malice on her face. "You don't mention any of what you just heard to mum. She doesn't need to know anything about the party, you know she doesn't like parties. Walk! Home! Now!" Rose Evans, their mother, liked them to meet up after school and walk home together, because she didn't think that the streets were safe these days. She also said that if they didn't walk through the front door within in two minutes of each other then they would both be grounded.

That particular day was the last day of the school year. Lily had just finished year six at the local primary school and Petunia was in year eight. They were walking along Wisteria Way and were just about to turn into Wisteria Walk when they heard the familiar creaky voice. 

"Walking home with your sister are you Petunia. I think that's very brave of someone in your status to be seen with someone with her reputation and hair! Fiery, to match her temper. Well, run along then, wouldn't want to be late home. See you later Petunia." And that was that. Lily was fuming. He always got cheap laughs from her and she was sick of it. She marched all the way home and went and sat in her bedroom. 

She hated people making fun of her hair. It was the only part of her that she really hated. It stood out of the crowd when all she really wanted to do was blend in. Which was an odd thing to want when all her hobbies involved her performing in front of people. She liked to play the flute and dance, mostly ballet but she had tried most types. 

She sat on her bed when she heard a knock on the door. 

"Who is it?" she asked not looking up.

"It's only me" came her mum's voice. The door opened, her mum came in and sat on the bottom of her bed. Lily curled up in her pink, flowery duvet and clutched her toy bunny, Flopsy. Flopsy, as her name, was flopsy. She used to be big, stiff and marshmallow pink but now she was small, grey and, well, flopsy. 

Rose Evans put on, what she thought to be a stern yet conscientious face as she entered her daughter's room. She sat down at the end of her bed, paused and then said "you know Lily, some relationships are just not meant to be. We're not supposed to get along with everyone in life. Take Mr Brown for example, there is a perfectly good reason why he favours Petunia over yourself." Lily sniffed sarcastically, she seriously doubted it. She could see no logic behind his attitude. "I'm serious Lily, there is a specific reason why he is afraid of young people, especially with red hair. A couple of years ago he was mugged and he didn't see anything except a flash of red hair when one of them turned around. It's left him traumatised."

Lily, for the first time in her life, felt sorry for Mr Brown, but she still found fault in his argument. "But mum, that doesn't explain his bad attitude towards young people." She said.

"No, it doesn't," her mum said softly, "but sometimes after one event you can start creating false images of groups of people. Stereotyping them and sticking to you're instincts instead of leaving it behind and simply moving on." With that her mum patted her on the shoulder and left the room. 

Lily got underneath the covers and stared up at the ceiling, reflecting upon what her mum had just told her and promised to forgive people if they ever judged her again and not to be bothered by snide comments. She knew it may not work but she was willing to try it, just out of sympathy for poor Mr Brown, whoever would have thought that one-day she would think that. Things and relationships change over long periods of time, she had learned that today but that didn't mean that she would remember it in the future.

Lily must have dozed off sometime after that because she woke up still in her clothes. It was dark in her room and she rubbed her eyes until they adjusted to the light. She switched on her lamp and looked at her clock. Quarter past midnight. She switched off her light and tried to get back to sleep but with no luck. She simply wasn't tired anymore.

She lay there thinking about what could get her back to sleep. She thought about reading a book but she couldn't be bothered, she'd read all of her books too recently. She relived the day's events when a thought struck her. She could keep track of all of her favourite memories by finding a box and filling it with special things. 

She picked up her photo album and started flicking through it. She finally settled on her favourite five photos. Baby Lily in the autumn leaves, she liked this photo because autumn was her favourite season. Lily at three at her first ballet lesson, Lily loved ballet she had three classes a week. Lily at six learning to play the flute in her bedroom, her mum had taken the photo through the door without Lily knowing. Lily (seven) and Petunia (nine) playing in the snow and Lily at eleven in her first major role in a ballet performance. 

She scanned around her room for other things and saw her medallion, first place in the under twelve's woodwind class at a music competition. Her sister had also taken part and had smashed her clarinet when she didn't even get a placement. Their parents weren't too happy about that! Lily could never do that to her flute though, she loved it too much. She put the medallion on the small pile she was collecting on her bed. Lily decided that that was enough for now and found a small, black box, put the stuff in and climbed back into bed. 

"But mum! I've told you! It was Lily! Lily did it! It wasn't me! I heard her moving around in the middle of the night too! She must have, I dunno, climbed in through the window after going to a party or something! Sounds like something she would do!" Lily opened her eyes to the dulcet tones of her sister. That was just like her. Do something and then blame it all on Lily.

Lily threw back her covers with anger raging through her; her breathing was fast and sharp. She marched up to her door and flung it open. She faced Petunia and shouted, "STOP! STOP IT! IT'S NOT FAIR! DON'T BLAME ME FOR EVERY SMALL THING YOU DO!" Petunia's hair started to turn pink, vibrant pink, from the roots downwards. "YOU'RE EVIL! YOU ARE PURE EVIL!" The pink flowed down her hair and face. "EVIL I TELL YOU! EVIL!" Fuchsia pink flooded down Petunia's body followed by purple, blue and finally green. 

"Lily...what's happening?" asked her mum looking worriedly between her daughters. 

"What?" asked Petunia, "is something wrong?"

"Wrong? WRONG!" screamed Lily, "WRONG?" causing tiny freckles to pop up on Petunia's nose. She had lived in luxury freckle-free and now she would pay! "I have spent my whole life living in the shadows of you and your group of friends, too scared to speak up for myself because of you and people like you. I have been carelessly thrown aside by people too self absorbed with their own problems. People like Mr Brown don't see you as I do. They see the sweet innocent Petunia whereas I see the evil, self-centred devil who makes my life a living hell!" and with that she turned around , went back into her room and slammed the door. 

Petunia, who was still a rather shocking shade of lime green and with too many freckles to count stared at her mother, who was also in a state of shock after watching her daughter change colours. Rose Evans managed to say "Petunia dear, close your mouth, it's not ladylike for a girl to look like a goldfish." And carried on sorting out the laundry.

Petunia was bewildered. She had never been in a situation like this before, she naturally thought that everyone loved her. She didn't know what to do so she took a deep breath, knocked on her sister's door and waited for a reply.

"Go away!" were the only two words that Lily said.

"Please let me in. Please?" she paused. "Look, I'm really sorry about everything. I didn't know that I was doing that to you. You should have said something to me, talked to me, anything." She paused again and was about to give up when the door slowly opened. Lily came out rubbing her red eyes and she hugged her sister. The effect was instant. The freckles and greeness immediately disappeared, except for three small freckles on the bridge of Petunia's nose to serve as a reminder.

Lily then went down to breakfast. There was a letter on the table, which was addressed to Miss Lily Evans, 4 Privet Drive, Little Whinging, Surrey. She turned it over and saw a seal bearing some crest with a lion, badger, snake and eagle on it. She opened it. 'You have been accepted into Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry.' This had to be a joke.

Please review! We'd really appreciate it! I will love everyone that reviews forever and ever! The ikkle button is just there, you know you want to click it!

We will use flames to keep us warm as we write more and more and more!

Just one more thing! Could you tell me whether you want me to post chapter five. Because I don't have the in-between chapters that Elaine's writing but I do have chapter five, which is with James and Sirius. If you would rather wait, that's fine! But it could be a while before I see Elaine because we're on holiday and I won't see her 'til school.


	2. Chapter 2

A/N: Sorry it's been so long since we last posted! It's really hard to write it up when it's 2 people writing the story! I only just got this from Elaine and I'm typing it up now! As you can see!

Chapter 2

"Hey that's not fair!" James shouted to a tall, dark-haired boy called Sirius, "I hit it fair and square! You know I'm no good on my left side and you used it against me!"

Sirius laughed and retorted "I don't know what you're talking about Jamesie!" James looked like he was about to cry and flew over to Sirius on his Cleansweep 9 broomstick. Gemini, Sirius twin sister, flew over and joined the boys.

"My turn now!" she said.

"But we don't want to play anymore!" Sirius said to his twin. Gemini scowled, they always did this, and ran over to her brother and started to tickle him until he was crying with laughter. 

"Ok Gem! You win!" he managed to choke out through giggles. Happy with the response Gemini flew over to where three, huge goalposts stood. Sirius decided to guard the goal posts whilst James surveyed the scene and commentated.

"Gem, the black-haired beauty is lining up for her first penalty shot! She bends down low, takes aim and hits the Quaffle into the middle hoop, the keeper is stunned and the crowd go wild!" he said in his best commentator-like voice. 

Now that all three of them had had a go at playing penalty shoot out Quidditch, a game of their own invention, sort of, they decided to back up to the Potter mansion.

James was an average eleven-year-old boy. He was horn rimmed glasses and had a tuft of untidy hair which never stayed in the same style due to the fact that he ran his hand through it at least twice every ten minutes. He loved anything and everything to do with Quidditch and was a wizard.

His best friend Sirius had jet black hair and an infectious laugh. He was always smiling and attracting the girls as he said that it was 'good experience for later life.' Sirius had a younger brother called Aries, who was five and a twin sister called Gemini.

Gemini looked a lot like her twin. She too had long, dark hair and was generally a happy person. She loved reading and was looking forward to her first year at school. As the letter had not arrived yet she didn't know which school she would get into but she hoped it would be Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. The headmaster, Albus Dumbledore, was probably the best headmaster of all time, or so she'd heard.

Sirius, Gemini and Aries stay with James' family because they had had a big argument with their parents. They were very grateful to Edward and Shirley Potter for taking care of them during the summer holidays and whenever they could get away from 12 Grimauld Place.

"Ok, who's for dinner?" Sirius said.

"I don't care! I'll eat anything! You know I would!" James replied whilst Sirius had already started to get out the plates and cutlery by hand. He couldn't use a wand yet partly because he was underage and partly because he didn't have one yet. He was getting one next Sunday and was extremely excited. He began to crack some eggs into a hot frying pan and watched as they sizzled away.

Aries, smelling food, came into the kitchen and stared hungrily. "Can I have some?" he pleaded and pulled, what he thought to be a puppy dog-eyed expression in Sirius' direction.

"Yeah mate. One or two?" Sirius asked his little brother.

"Erm…one" when Sirius finished cooking the eggs James, Sirius, Gem and Aries all tucked in. It was the best eggs they had had for ages and longed for more. However, Edward Potter came in and shooed them out of the kitchen and into their rooms.

James and Sirius shared a room. Their room was quite big with a bunk bed (Sirius top, James bottom) on one side of the wall and the walls were plastered with posters of their favourite Quidditch team of all time, Puddlemere United. All along the shelves were photos of Sirius and James at a variety of different ages. They weren't ordinary photos, for the people moved as they pleased.

James walked over to the window and stared out. The view wasn't very nice but it would have to do. The one thing that he did love about it was the fact that there was just green space that stretched out for miles and miles. But green space can get a bit boring if that's all you see out of your window for eleven years. 

Sirius soon came to join him, "You ok Jamesie boy?"

"Yeah, just nervous I guess. I mean the letter should be arriving sometime tomorrow and I really want to get into Hogwarts. I'd be devastated if only one of us got in and the other had to go to Durmstrang or somewhere." James sighed sadly.

"Yeah, I hope we'll all be together. Don't worry James, we'll get into Hogwarts easy peasy, you see if we don't! I mean, who could resist our handsome features and perfect smiles?" James and Sirius laughed and James felt immediately better, I mean, who could not like Sirius?

Pleez R&R!


	3. Chapter 3

A/N: this writing up is getting all messed up! Oh well! It'll be right soon!

Chapter 3

As soon as the sum came up James woke up. Sirius was sleeping like a very ugly baby on the top bunk and had no consideration for James as he was happily snoring away, not for the first time either. Every night he had to sleep through Sirius' elephantine snores. It really got on his nerves, it was the only fault he could find in his friend. James got dressed and went downstairs for breakfast.

"Hmm, what should I have today? Let's see. Yesterday I had cereal and toast I think…" he reached out for a sandwich (which was kept on the shelf) and went over to the fridge and it sang "GOOD MORNING!" over and over and over again. He quickly shut the door after grabbing the bacon and started muttering foul words under his breath at the fridge.

As he was frying the bacon a loud screech came from somewhere above his head. He looked up and saw an owl holding three letters in its beak. He quietly took the letters from the owls beak and had forgotten about his hunger.

His heart was pounding as he read 'Mr James Potter, 27 Mulberry Cottage, Godric's Hollow, Middle of no where.' This had to be it. James slowly turned the letter over and held his breath. Slowly he opened one eye (as he had not dared to look at the envelope) and saw a crest bearing a badger, snake, lion and an eagle and almost instantly he broke into a huge smile and rushed into his room. 

He burst into the room and shouted "SIRIUS WAKE UP!" Sirius murmured something like 'shut up' in his sleep but James ignored him. "SIRIUS! IT'S OUR SCHOOL LETTERS! WAKE UP!" at the mention of school Sirius sat bolt upright and wished he hadn't as he got a head rush.

"Ouch! Pass me my letter s'il vous plait" he said in VERY bad french. James rolled his eyes and handed over the letter with Sirius' name on.

"Did you get in?" James asked but Sirius' face said it all.

"No I didn't, I've been accepted at Durmstrang." He said solemly.

"WHAT?" shouted James, "Well if you go, I'm going too! I'm not…" but didn't get to finish what he was about to say as Sirius interrupted him. "Only joking! I have been allowed in! YEEES! WE'RE GOING TO HOGWARTS! WE'RE GOING TO HOGWARTS!"

Sirius shouted, waking up the rest of the house.

Edward and Shirley Potter came through in their pajamas and slippers.

"What's happened?" asked Shirley confused. 

"Mum! Me and Sirius got into Hogwarts!" James replied. Shirley looked relieved and remembered feeling the same when she had got her letter and said "Well done boys, now calm down!"

"WE CAN'T WE'RE TOO EXCITED!" and at that moment Gemini came through the door and Aries following her grasping his teddy bear, Sir Busterfur Roosterfur Teddy, and rubbing his eyes. 

"Did I get a letter too?" asked Gemini hopefully. James tossed her her letter. Soon there was more screaming as Gemini joined in with the celebration. She too had got into Hogwarts and was very happy indeed. Aries looked upset and soon they began to notice (he had started to cry) through tears he said "You're all going to leave me by myself! I'll have no one to play trains with anymore! It's not fair! I want to go to Hogwarts too!" 

Gemini rushed over to her brother. "It's ok. We'll come and visit you at Christmas and Easter times and we'll bring you lots of sweets." At the mention of sweets Aries perked up and stopped crying.

"What kind of sweets?" he asked excitedly.

"Bertie Bott's Every Flavour Beans of couse!" Gemini laughed as she hugged her brother.

"Ok! Then I definitely think you should go! I'll help you pack and then maybe you'll bring me sweets quicker!" Gemini giggled and shook her head, brothers!

Pleez R&R!


	4. Chapter 4

A/N: Wahey! I'm writing up fast now! Go me! Thnx 2 ppl who have reviewed so far! We really appreciate it!! And thanx to Laura Thompson, who lives at…

Chapter 4

After receiving his Hogwarts letter, James was extremely excited and restless. He wanted to go to Diagon Alley to buy his things straight away but his mum was making him wait until the weekend AFTER next! He wanted to read all the necessary books so he could be better than everyone else.

He had only three weeks left of the summer holiday and had decided that he needed to do something, but what? He went to find Sirius, which wasn't hard as he was screaming his head off.

"Hey Sirius, do you want to go exploring?" he asked his friend who was poking bugs with sticks, mature or what! 

Sirius looked up and replied, "yeah ok, I was getting bored of this anyway and we STILL haven't found that secret den that your parents are always on about!" And with that they set off straight away.

Not long after they left James' house Sirius began to feel bored and started to wish he had brought his stick so he could poke more bugs. James was looking the other way so Sirius ran into the trees to hide. He peered around a tree and saw (as well as heard) James looking for him.

"Sirius, Sirius? Where are you? Sirius please come out!" Sirius laughed silently and decided to wait a little while longer before coming out.

He stepped backwards to get a better view of where James was going. Suddenly he fell into a hole in the base of the tree.

"AGHHHHHHH!" Sirius yelled as he fell downwards.

"Sirius? Where are you? Are you ok? What happened?" asked James in quick succession trying to follow the screams. 

"HELP JAMES! I'M IN A HOLE IN A TREE! PLEASE HELP ME!"

"Which tree? Where?" James asked whilst he frantically searched for his best friend.

"James! Follow my voice!" Sirius shouted as he rightened himself in the shadowy hole. He looked around and saw…nothing. 'What am I going to do if James can't find me?' he thought 'I won't be able to go to Hogwarts and I'll miss out on all the fun!' He quickly banished these thoughts from his head.

"Sirius, if you're not saying anything how am I meant to follow your voice? Shout or sing or something!" James yelled.

"Ok James, I'm down a hole, not deaf no need to shout. Um..THE HILLS ARE ALIVE WITH THE SOUND OF MUSIC!" 

"Nice Siri, great song!" James muttered sarcastically as he looked around. He looked for a tree with a hole in the base. Unfortunately for James there were lots of trees with holes in the base. He had to find him, life without Sirius would be awful, Sirius was like a brother to him. 

"Oh Sirius! Where are you?" he asked desperately.

"James! James! Over here!" Sirius yelled. James located where the cries were coming from and immediately rushed over to the tree and saw the hole and shouted, "Sirius! Are you in this tree?"

"Again! I am in a hole! Not deaf! And YES I AM IN THIS TREE!!!" Sirius shouted back. James looked around for something to help him retrieve Sirius from the pitch black hole. He saw some vines lying on the ground and threw them down, "Grab hold of this!" he shouted.

Sirius did as he was told whilst James, with all the strength he could muster, tied the vines to a root and hauled Sirius out of the hole.

Minutes later, although it felt like hours, Sirius had returned back to daylight and James was looking at him to see if he was hurt at all. Seeing James was looking Sirius looked up and said, "Thanks James, I don't know what I would do without you!"

James smiled and breathed a sigh of relief. For a moment there he had been scared that he had lost his bestest friend in the whole wide world. 

They strolled up to Mulberry Cottage where Gemini was waiting for them. 

"Find the den?" Edward Potter asked.

"Sirius fell in a hole!" laughed James.

"A hole hey? Not the hole by the big oak tree?" James' dad asked.

"Yes, that's the one! Why?" Sirius asked confused.

"HEY! SHIRLEY! THE BOYS FOUND THE DEN!"

Pleez R&R! 


	5. Chapter 5

This is Katie! This story is written by me and my friend Elaine and we write different chapters then give them to the other to read and we make alterations and corrections and such. I'm not going to say which chapters are mine and which are Elaine's but I would like to know if you can tell a difference in the of writing. Thanks Katie.

Disclaimer: I don't own the characters which are copyright of JKR and Warner Bros but I do own the characters which came out of mine and Elaine's imagination, these are the characters and situations that you don't recognise. Get it?

Chapter Five

James couldn't sleep that night, he was too excited. His mum had told him the night before that they were going to Diagon Alley in the morning and James loved Diagon Alley. It was one of the only places in England that belonged solely to wizards and contained many magic shops such as Madam Malkin's robes for all occasions, the book shop Flourish and Blott's and James' personal favourite, Quality Quidditch Supplies. 

He knew all the staff at Quality Quidditch Supplies and talked to them about the latest brooms and equipment. He had huge debates about which team would win the league (James was sure that it would be Puddlemere United but Thomas Davill, the owner of the shop was sure that it would be the Montrose Magpies.) James could spend hours in there with Sirius and Gemini who were both avid Quidditch supporters too. 

James got up really early that morning and couldn't back to sleep so he decided to see what he needed from Diagon Alley. Well there was all his school stuff and he did need some more practical jokes. He was a real prankster. 

He walked over to his window where he kept his Cleansweep nine on it's stand. He knelt down and opened his wooden Quidditch chest where he kept his Quidditch related things.

HNNNNNNNNNNNNnnnnnNNNNNNNNNNNNKRHHHHhhhhHHHhhhHH

He heard Sirius snore from behind him. "Oh shut up Sirius" he whispered angrily. He looked in all of the jars that were in the chest. He was out of handle wax, better remember to get some more of that. Oh, and he needed some new tail clippers, his were totally blunt.

HNNNNNNNNNNNnnnnNNNNNNKRHHHHHhhhhHHHHHHHHhhhhhH

"Shut UP Sirius!" James said. "God, you're really irritating sometimes you know! Really irritating!"

HNNNNNNNnKRKRKRK "what?" asked Sirius, waking up suddenly. "What? Sorry, did I miss something? What?"

"Never mind Sirius, go back to sleep" James said whilst flicking through his Quidditch autograph book.

"Nope!" said Sirius, leaping off the top bunk. "I'm awake now!" he strolled over the room and switched on the radio, channel 27 on the WWN (Wizarding Wireless Network) was playing the latest chart topper, Wonderful Wizardry by Magi and Cal.

"Wooooooooooooooooooooooooh! Nderful wizardry!" Sirius sang into an imaginary microphone. "It's the best thing in the world!"

There was a knock on the wall followed by a "SIIIIIIIIIIRIUS! SHUT UP! I'm trying to sleep and you can't sing!" Sirius grinned evilly and his eyes lit up as he ran to the wall, used it as a drum and sang "Woooooooooooooooooooooooh! Nderful wizardry!" into the wall.

"Sirius don't make me come in there!" Gemini warned from the other side of the wall.

"NO! Or so I've heard! Wooooooooooo…" but Sirius never got chance to finish the word as a very angry Gemini flung open the door and smacked her brother round the head and walked out again. James laughed and received a death glare from Sirius. 

James switched off the radio and said "Breakfast, coming Siri?"

"Would I miss a chance to eat?" said Sirius and they raced downstairs. 

Shirley Potter, as the two boys thought frequently, was the best cook in the whole world. She used recipes from her favourite chef, Janie Olivia, and changed the spells very slightly. She had worked out when she was younger that if she changed the pronunciation of the incantation then it changed the taste. So instead of saying "comidamos spaghetti" and pronouncing it com-ee-da-moss you pronounced it co-mee-day-mose and it tasted much nicer.

The boys and Gemini and Aries who had just joined them quickly ate their breakfast.

"We're leaving at ten so I want you all ready for five to. Wrap up warm, it's chilly outside." Said Shirley Potter using the scourgify charm to clear the table.

Gemini went upstairs into the spare room, which was hers during the summer. It was an average room with white walls, blue curtains and a blue bed spread. She made it her own however with her vast collection of posters. She had three frames up on her wall which Mr Potter had charmed to show a different poster every day. The three that were on the wall today were her Quidditch team, Puddlemere United, Magi and Cal, the famous wizard singers and Johnny Depp a muggle actor who had become quite famous in the wizard world.

She opened her wardrobe and got down her coat and scarf and put them on. Then she reached into the pockets of her coat and pulled out her gloves. She shoved them on her hands and wiggled her fingers so that they fit. She then went back downstairs. James and Sirius were sat at the table playing wizard chess. They were obviously not ready.

"Mrs Potter's not going to be happy with you two!" Gemini giggled sitting next to James and surveying the chess board.

"We'll be fine" said Sirius, leaning back on his chair with his hands behind his head.

"SIRIUS BLACK!" came a shrill voice from behind Sirius. He panicked and fell off his chair. James and Gemini laughed as they saw Aries standing in the doorway with his hands on his hips doing a very accurate impression of Shirley Potter. Sirius, who thought they were laughing at him, scowled and said "I'm sorry Mrs Potter, I'll clear up immediately" He stood up, picked the chair up and then he saw Aries.

"You! Why I………you are dead mate!" and he ran after him. James and Gemini just laughed as they started to clear up the chess board. Two of the chess pieces were having a fight. One kept shouting "Cheese!" and the other one was shouting "Cake!" A third was rolling on the floor, giggling and saying "Cheesecake!" James picked up the two that were fighting and shoved them in the box whilst Gemini picked up the one that was giggling. James put the board in and then closed the box up and they left the room.

"Cheese!"

"Cake"

"Cheesecake!!!"

James and Gemini were just walking into the living room, where the fireplace was, when they heard a scream from outside. They both ran out the front door, which was wide open, and into the garden. There was another scream and lots of giggles that came next. They followed the sound and saw Sirius playing with Aries. He had obviously 'caught' him but forgiven him. Sirius was like that, he never kept a grudge for long. Except if he thought that the other person didn't deserve his kindness, like his family. They really didn't deserve it. They had mistreated Gemini, Aries and him and that's why they spent the summer at the Potter's.

James Potter had been Sirius' best friend ever since he could remember. They had always played together and sometimes included Gemini. Gemini's friends had gone to a muggle school. Gemini, as with all wizard children, had been taught to read, write and simple spells at home with their parents. 

When Mrs Potter had got all of the children ready she handed the floo powder box to James and he took a handful. He stood in fireplace, shouted "Diagon Alley" and threw the powder at his feet. Floo powder was a fast and effective means of transport for the wizarding world but it did have it's disadvantages. When two people entered to Floo network at exactly the same time and were going to the same place they would arrive at exactly the same time. This was a rarity but it did sometimes happen.

James felt the familiar, nauseating feeling as he span through the tunnels of the network. But the feeling soon ended when he crashed straight into someone. They fell out of the fireplace and onto the floor of the Leaky Cauldron.

"I'm really sorry! I don't know what happened. I went in the fire and the next thing I smacked into you! I'm so sorry!" a voice came from somewhere behind him. He stood up and saw a dark haired girl lying on the floor with the contents of her bag spilled everywhere. He held out his hand to help her up.

"Hi, I'm James Potter, pleased to meet you" she shook his hand "and I'm Katie Felton, pleased to meet you too! How old are you?" she asked looking at him.

"Eleven, twelve this year, I'm starting Hogwarts this year. What about you?" he looked at her, she was tiny but something told him that she was older than she looked. There was something about it, maybe it was the twinkle in her eyes or the fact that she hadn't stopped smiling since they met.

"Same as you. What house do you think you'll be in? My family have always been Ravenclaws so I'll probably end up in there but I'd much rather be in Gryffindor!"

"Gryffindor for me! My family have been for generations and I can't wait!" he said. 

"I've got to go find my mum, I bet she's looking at the new Janie Olivia book, see you on the train!" she said leaving the pub.

"Jamie's got a girlfriend! Jamie's got a girlfriend!" Sirius sang from behind him.

"That's enough Sirius. James, who was that girl?" asked his mum.

"She said her name was Katie Felton, she's going to Hogwarts this year too and she is NOT my girlfriend!" he said, sticking his tongue out at Sirius. James, Sirius and Gemini headed straight for Quality Quidditch Supplies but were stopped by Mrs Potter, "We are not going in there today, well not now anyway, we're going to Madam Malkin's first, to get your school robes" she said and they followed her and Aries into the shop.

Madam Mary Malkin was a short, dumpy, middle aged witch with greying chestnut brown hair, which was tied back into a loose bun. Wispy strands of hair stuck out at odd angles from her head. She had a warm smile and bright eyes, which were framed at the sides with crow's feet. 

She was making robes for a small, slightly podgy boy with watery blue eyes and a thin, pointed nose. He smiled at James and Sirius as he had his Hogwart's robes made for him by Madam Malkin. The patch on the robes showed the Hogwarts crest before the person was sorted and was charmed to show their house after the sorting ceremony.

"Come along now Peter, we don't have all day!" a woman said from the other side of the shop. The boy hopped off the stool, paid for the robes and left the shop after the woman, who was seemingly his mother.

James and Sirius got measured for their robes whilst Gemini, as all girls do, headed straight for the dress robes. There were two girls looking through the dress robes. Holding them up against themselves, posing and laughing. 

"Excuse Me," said Gemini in a small voice, trying to get past. They didn't move. "Ex..ex..excuse me" they didn't move. Gemini was too intimidated by the girls to push past so was about to give up when she felt a hand on her shoulder, it was her brother.

"EXCUSE ME!" he shouted so loud that the shop stopped and turned to look at him. "My sister was trying to get past you but you ignored her."

"Oh, we're sorry!" one of them said, moving slightly so that Gemini could get past. "Hi! I'm Kate Thompson and this is my friend Robyn Howe. We're starting Hogwarts this September, what year are you in?" she said moving closer to him. Sirius grinned. Gemini rolled her eyes and continued to look through the dress robes.

"Nice to meet you! I'm Sirius Black and this is my twin sister, Gemini and this is…hey! Where did he go?" Sirius looked around madly. "James? James mate?"

"Yeah?" James said poking his head round the corner.

"That's my best mate James Potter and we're all starting Hogwarts this year too." Gemini left her brother to it and went to get her school robes. Kate kept giggling at Sirius really bad jokes and Robyn was twirling a strand of her hair round her fingers. Gemini had seen girls act like that around boys before. Once her and her cousin Nymphadora had seen a group of older boys and girls by the Quidditch stadium acting all dizzy and weird. Gemini just hoped that it didn't happen to her soon.

When they had everything that they need from Diagon Alley the Potters and the Blacks went home and al four children went to sleep straight about, tired from all the excitement.

I hope you liked it! I did! You met some of the main characters there! And my two favourites! Katie and Kate! Please review! We will use flames to toast our food whilst we write the next chapter!


	6. Chapter 6

Hi! Katie again. I'm not quite sure what chapter this is meant to be lol but I'll repost everything in the right order when I next see Elaine. Which will be soon!

Disclaimer: recognise it? It belongs to JKR and Warner Bros. Don't recognise it? IT' MINE!!!!!

Chapter…I don't know what chapter this is!

Lily and her family decided to ignore the letter, it was probably just a prank from one of the boys at school. They often called Lily a witch because of her green eyes, so this sounded like one of the immature things that they would do. They normally just stuck to running up behind her and pushing her over saying that they were just seeing whether she could fly, but they didn't do that anymore, not since she had just bounced straight back up again. 

Petunia kept insisting that witches and wizards didn't exist and that anyone that claimed that they had magic blood must be a freak. Then again, that was Petunia's answer to everything! If they didn't fit in then they were automatically categorised as either a loser or a freak. 

Lily, however, felt like it was all strangely real. It would explain why weird things kept happening to her. Like the other day when she turned Petunia all those different colours, or when Petunia's rabbit suddenly grew extra long ears after Petunia refused to let Lily stroke him or the time when Petunia was suddenly glued to the floor. It seemed to happen when Lily got mad and there was no one that made her more angry than her sister, not even Mr Brown. It was Petunia's smugness and mistreatment of others that got on Lily's nerves. It made her mad just thinking about it.

One morning when Lily came downstairs for breakfast she found her mum at the front door arguing with the postman, who was frantically trying to push letters through the front door. Lily, not wanting to be seen, hid on the stairs.

"Really!" her mum said sighing with annoyance, "They are not for this house! I'm sure of it! Why would someone be sending us this amount of letters?"

"Listen lady, I was sent 'ere by me boss. This is numba four Privet Drive 'ain't it?" the man outside was saying. Lily would have said that he looked around thirty-five, maybe slightly older and he was getting extremely nervous. 

"So that is you're only proof?" her mum argued, she could argue for England. Lily and Petunia tried their best to stay on the right side of her. "That your employer told you to bring them here?"

"Well, yeah." He said, shifting around. "Tha' an' this ruddy great sack load o' letters I've bin carryin' around all mornin'! Look!" he said, pointing to his bicycle, which had a trailer, attached to the back of it. Lily saw that there was an enormous sack of letters inside it, it reminded her of Father Christmas. Rose Evans looked from the man, to the bike and back to the man again.

"Well," she said finally, "let's see the letters then." The man reached into his pocket where he had stashed a couple of the letters and pulled them out. The envelope was dirty yellow in colour and was addressed in emerald green ink. It read Miss Lily Evans, 4 Privet Drive, Little Whinging, Surrey. Rose Evans flipped it over and sure enough it bore the same seal as before. 

Lily was shocked. Someone obviously wanted to get through to her pretty badly. Lily's mum apologised to the postman and dragged the sack load of letters inside and put them on the kitchen table. Lily walked into the kitchen as if she was just coming down for breakfast. She was immediately bombarded with questions. Her mum wanted to know if she had signed any petitions, entered any competitions or given their address to a random company. Lily hadn't. They decided that the only sensible thing to do was to write back to the people asking them what they wanted. Rose Evans read through the letter but could find no return address so decided that if the letters didn't stop then she would go down to the post office and find out their origin.

That evening when they had finished eating their dinner Lily stayed behind in the kitchen to help her mum tidy the things away, something that Petunia would never dream of doing, but Lily was dying to talk about the letters.

"Mum," Lily began, "what if the letters are real, and this is a real school, and I am a witch, and I'm supposed to go there, and…." Lily's mother interrupted her with "Dream on Lils" and left the kitchen.

Lily got out one of the letters and sat down to read it through again, there had to be a way of getting hold of one of these people, since they wanted to get through to her very badly. _Dear Miss Lily Evans_, she read, _you have been accepted into Hogwarts school of Witchcraft and Wizardry_. Hogwarts, she seemed to recognise that name from somewhere. Maybe she didn't. Wait a minute! Wasn't that the school that Arabella Figg, the girl over the road, went to. Maybe it did exist then. But witchcraft and wizardry? Lily didn't believe in that stuff anymore! It might have appealed to her when she was about seven but not anymore, not now that she was growing up. _Enclosed is a list of what you will need for school, we look forward to seeing you on September 1st. If you need any help just shout for us._

Lily read the last part over and over again. _If you need any help just shout for us._ Did that mean literally or just write like her mum thought? _If you need any help just shout for us._ It was a crazy idea, but worth a try. So Lily shouted "FOR US!" At that second there was a loud bang and a rather flustered looking woman appeared in Lily's kitchen. Lily didn't know whether to smile, scream or cry!

"Ah, you must be Miss Evans, I'm Professor Dreamstone, your new transfiguration teacher," the woman said. Lily was stunned.

"So this witch stuff is real?" Lily asked.

"Yes, Miss Evans, all this 'witch stuff' is real Miss Evans, now, where are you're parents, I should probably talk to them about all of this. Every year it's the same with the muggle families, every year! At least you had the sense to figure out what the letter meant! You won't believe how many people we get trying to contact us via the post office, it's terrible! We really need a more effective way! Anyway, you're parents?" Lily stood in awe watching the woman. "Miss Evans?" the teacher asked, this was often the reaction she got from people who had never seen a witch before.

Lily snapped out of it and took the woman through into her living room. As soon as Rose Evans saw the woman she leapt of the sofa and screamed.

"Calm down Mrs Evans! I am not going to hurt you or anything" Professor Dreamstone laughed. "I am Professor Ingrid Dreamstone from Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. Lily summoned me a couple of minutes ago and so I will answer any questions you may have."

"First of all," her father, Robert Evans, started, "is this all a big joke?"

"No! Absolutely not! I am a trained Professor, I spent four years training to be a teacher of transfiguration."

"Ok, second question," said her father, "what the hell is transfiggywhatsit?" he received sharp looks from his wife. "What? It's a fair question!"

"Transfiguration is a school subject which involves manipulating objects with magic to change shape and grow et cetera. The other school subjects include Herbology, Astronomy, Care of Magical Creatures, Charms and Defence Against the Dark Arts."

"Woah!" said Robert Evans, "There are Dark Arts?"

"Yes, as with everything, wizard and muggle alike there are two sides to an argument. In the wizard world there have been people such as Grindlewand and you muggles have had Hitler."

"Ok, and what is a muggle?" asked Rose Evans. The conversation went on like this for at least another hour and ended when Professor Dreamstone decided that they'd had enough. Mr and Mrs Evans were getting very into it and were steadily asking more and more questions. Ingrid Dreamstone told them that she would be back tomorrow morning to help Lily get her school supplies from a place called Diagon Alley.

Lily couldn't sleep that night, not only was she to excited but Petunia was in the next room gossiping on the phone to her friend, Caroline Hawker. "Oh I know, it was so embarrassing wasn't it, I still can't believe she came wearing a bikini top! I wouldn't have left the house for weeks!"

Her mum who came into her room and opened her curtains waked Lily up at six o'clock the next morning. By half past seven she was sat watching children's television I the living room when there was a knock on the door. It matched the Professor's personality, sharp yet quiet. Robert and Rose Evans rushed to the door to greet the teacher and were followed by Lily. Petunia had been sent to her friend's house after protesting that Lily wasn't going to the school if she couldn't go too. She was just jealous.

Rose Evans opened the door to the strict face of Ingrid Dreamstone pushing her oval shaped glasses up her nose. Lily's mum welcomed her into their house and offered her a cup of tea. Professor Dreamstone explained that there wasn't enough time as she had only managed to link their house to the Floo network for an hour. It took a full twenty minutes to explain Flooing to the Evans' and after that they still didn't understand it properly. 

Professor Dreamstone went in first. She stepped into their fireplace and disappeared with a flash of light. Mrs Evans winced as one of her ornaments toppled on top of her mantle piece. Lily went next. She stood in the fireplace, said "Diagon Alley" and threw the powder at her feet. The effect was immediate. She started spinning ferociously and a feeling of nausea swept through her body as she landed on a sunny, cobbled street. 

When Mr Evans arrived he asked where they were and found out that they were somewhere in London, he found that fascinating. Shortly after Mrs Evans arrived and they set of in search of Lily's school things. Professor Dreamstone directed Lily off to Olivander's wand shop whilst she took Lily's parents into Flourish and Blotts, which looked like a bookshop.

Lily opened the shop door and entered a dark, dusty room which was lit with candles and had rows of shelves at the back of it. 

"Hello?" Lily called into the darkness, "Hello? Is anyone there?" A figure slid across one of the shelves on a ladder.

"Ah, Lily Evans I presume?" a man said.

"Yes…how did you know that?" Lily asked.

"I know many things Miss Evans. Some worth knowing, some not. Some good, some bad. I know great things, great but terrible things. Now for your wand. Which is your wand hand?" Lily guessed that it was probably her right hand, as that was the hand she wrote with. "Try this one. 13 ¾" Maple wood with Unicorn hair" Lily took the wand and immediately a silver light shot out of it. "No! Try this! 9" Yew and Dragon Heartstring." She waved it and green bubbles with spikes on them flooded out. "Nope! Let's see. Try this one. 10 ½" Willow and Unicorn hair." She took it and the effect was instant. It felt as if it was breathing in time with her, this was definitely the one.

"Third time lucky I guess." He said jokily as she paid for her wand but said, "he will rise soon" dark and mysteriously as she left. She walked into the street and saw her mum and dad with Professor Dreamstone and her mum was carrying an owl!

"For you Lily! Ingrid here says that in the wizard world they use owls to carry post. It's so that you can keep in touch with us whilst you're at school." Her mum said, handing the cage to Lily. They went round and bought the rest of Lily's school things and then Professor Dreamstone left them with enough Floo Powder to get home (she had had a word with a ministry worker whilst they were there and he had hooked up Privet Drive to the network for the rest of the afternoon) and Lily's train ticket. 

Rose and Robert Evans were proud of their daughter. From talking to Ingrid Dreamstone they found out that it would be useful to have a witch in the family. They celebrated for the rest of the evening and went to sleep feeling extremely happy.

YAY! I liked this chapter! Please review!


	7. Chapter 7

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A/N: wahey! We're doing great, AND it's all in the right order now! Thanx to people who reviewed! They were all so nice!!!

Disclaimer: JKR owns the characters and situations you recognise. Warner Bros also owns some of them and the bit from F.R.I.E.N.D.S that you recognise towards the end, I, unfortunately, don't!

Chapter 7

Lily had been counting down the days until September 1st. She was very excited, so were her parents. They had both received lectures, however, from Professor Dreamstone about how dangerous it would be if the secrets of the wizarding world leaked into muggle society. Lily had also been warned but she knew better than to tell all her friends, they'd probably laugh at her anyway. So she told them that she had got a scholarship into an expensive boarding school. It was partially true; Hogwarts was a boarding school. 

Lily got nervous whenever she thought about sleeping there. The longest she had been away from her parents was a four-day adventure course earlier in the year. Not only was she terrified about being away from home but also she was scared of no one liking her and ending up with no friends. Her mum insisted that she would be fine because she was a lovely girl.

Another thing that was worrying Lily was that she wouldn't be able to find time to practice her flute or her ballet. There was nothing anyone could do about that so Rose Evans finally suggested that she took her flute and ballet shoes with her and maybe she could find a room to practice in somewhere. Lily said that she'd be too embarrassed to practice in front of her friends but at least she knew that they were there if she needed them.

Lily spent hours rearranging her stuff in her trunk and then taking them out and rearranging them again. Petunia looked on in absolute disgust. She still didn't see why she couldn't go to the school too and was very, very jealous. When her mum told her she couldn't go she sulked and decided that Lily was a freak. 

"Lily don't go to this school. If you stay I'll let you in my group at school" Petunia proposed to Lily. Lily thought about it for a while before gently letting Petunia down. Petunia was shocked, she never thought anyone would turn down to be in the most popular group at school. She then decided to blackmail Lily and say that if she went to the school then she would tell everyone that she was a witch. Lily just told Petunia the consequences and also said that she would turn her into a frog.

Lily ignored her sister at her bedroom door as she put her spellbooks back into the trunk. She heard her tawny owl hoot and she looked across to him. "You know Petunia, he still needs a name" Lily said "Any suggestions?"

"How about………Simba?" Petunia said.

"Simba…Simba…Simba. Yeah I like it. Thanks Petunia." Petunia walked into her sister's bedroom, sat next to her and hugged her.

"You know, I'm gonna miss you Lils. I might not have been very nice to you in the past but whatever I may have said or done I didn't really mean any of it. I love you Lily. I'm gonna miss you so much!" A tear rolled down Lily's cheek. "I'm gonna miss you too. I'm so scared. Professor Dreamstone kept mentioning things like Quidditch that didn't mean a thing to me and the money is really strange and I'm terrified!"

Petunia decided that she'd do something special for her sister so she made their living room into a cinema. She closed the curtains, made some popcorn and put on their favourite film, Sleepless in Seatle. Together they watched the film and fell asleep on the sofa. Rose Evans poked her head round the door to tell them to go to bed when she saw them. They always made things up in the end, however much they argued. It was sweet really. Rose Evans sighed as she knew that tomorrow was the last time she would see her daughter for a while.

Meanwhile at Godric's Hollow, James and Sirius were playing gobstones at two o'clock in the morning. Sirius kept shouting "I ROCK" whenever James lost and got sprayed with liquid and was screaming like a girl.

"Please shut up" came Gemini's voice through the wall.

"NO!" shouted James and Sirius at the same time. It always freaked Gemini out that they could talk at the same time.

"We are starting school tomorrow you two, I would like to turn up ready to learn and without huge bags under my eyes, so try and get some sleep" Gemini said. James and Sirius decided that she was right and got into bed and went to sleep, they were getting tired anyway.

When Shirley Potter came into James' room in the morning to get the boys up she saw James on the bottom bunk sucking his thumb and hugging his duvet like a teddy bear and Sirius had one arm and one leg dangling over the side of the top bunk. 

"James, Sirius, wake up!" she said, turning on the light. James opened his eyes groggily and got up. Sirius just mumbled "the squirrel stole my shoes" and rolled over.

"Sirius Black wake up!" Shirley Potter said, opening the curtains and turning off the light. She couldn't pull his duvet off though because he had kicked it off, that normally got people up. He just mumbled again, "Don't take money off the oak tree"

James' mum lit the end of her wand and shined it in Sirius' eyes. "NO!" he screamed, "NO! NO! NO! EVIL! MAKE IT GO AWAY!" and he fell off the bunk. "I'm okay" he said, standing up and brushing his clothes. 

"We weren't worried anyway!" muttered James. They dressed in muggle clothes, so that they didn't look odd walking through muggle London. They went downstairs where Gemini was sat stirring her cornflakes round and round and round… She was very pale and Sirius was concerned about his twin.

"You ok Gem? You look a bit ill" Sirius asked out of concern for his sister.

"Yeah, I'm fine, just nervous I guess." She replied mushing up her already soggy cornflakes and stirring them round and around.

"There's nothing to be worried about Gemini love. I felt exactly the same before my first day at Hogwarts but I made friends straight away on the train. You'll be fine, trust me!" Shirley Potter said patting Gemini's shoulder supportively.

"How are we going to get there Mrs Potter?" Sirius asked.

"By Floo! The ONLY way to travel!" she replied and got down the Floo powder. James liked flooing, he had been doing it for as long as he could remember and it was fun, as long as you kept your elbows well tucked in and took your glasses off before going in. 

When they arrived at Kings Cross Station he was in between Sirius and Gemini, Mr and Mrs Potter were in front. James felt scared. He was terrified that no one would like him, he still had Sirius but he was terrified that Sirius would make friends straight away and leave him out. Well if that happened he could always stick with Gemini, but she would probably make some girly friends. He didn't know what to do. Blood was pumping rapidly through his body and pounding around his ears.

Edward Potter stopped at a wall. A solid brick wall that divided platforms 9 and 10. "This," he began, "is Platform 9 ¾. It may look like a brick wall but it's actually a gateway to ANOTHER DIMENSION!"

"Don't be daft" laughed Shirley Potter "It's not as sinister as all that. If you walk into the wall then you end up on the platform. If you're scared it's probably best to do it fast and get it over and done with as soon as possible."

James let Sirius go first, just so he could see how it was done. James went next and Gemini watched him disappear.

"Excuse me?" a voice came from behind her. She turned around and saw a pretty red haired girl. "Hi, I'm Lily Evans. Is this Platform 9 ¾?" Gemini nodded. "How do you get onto it?"

"Well my friend's parents said that you run at the wall, crazy I know!" Gemini laughed, "I'm Gemini Black by the way." She said once they were safely on the platform. "What house do you want to be in?"

"I don't really know much about it. I'm from a non-magical background." Lily explained.

"Oh, I see, well I'll explain everything on the train" Gemini said as they went to find a compartment. They found a spare one straight away and claimed it for themselves.

"Let me explain the house system then, you understand the concept of houses don't you?" Gemini asked sitting opposite Lily.

"Yes, at my old school we had three houses, Shakespeare, Einstein and Pythagoras, English, Science and maths." Lily told her new friend.

"Well there's four houses at Hogwarts. Gryffindor, the house I want to be in it's for brave people. Slytherin for anyone evil. Ravenclaw for smart people and Hufflepuff for losers and people who don't belong anywhere else because they're not brave, evil or smart so losers!" she laughed.

"I bet I'm in Hufflepuff!" moaned Lily.

"Don't worry, I'm sure you won't be! I just hope I can get on the Quidditch team for at least one year!" Gemini said enthusiastically.

"Quidditch?" asked Lily, completely bewildered.

"Let me explain…"

"Go away Katie! Leave us in peace!" shouted Simon Felton at his younger sister.

"Aw Simon! Please let me stay! I've got nowhere else to go!" Katie pleaded.

"Go make some friends of your own! I don't want you pestering me all year!" he argued making shooing motions.

"I won't be able to anyway! I'm going to be in Gryffindor! Not stupid Ravenclaw!" she boasted.

"You're sure about that?" he asked mockingly. She nodded, "Ok, we don't mix with Gryffindors! Now leave!"

"FINE! I HATE YOU!" she screamed and left the compartment. Not knowing where to go next she decided to randomly walk down the corridor, mumbling to herself as she went 'he is so unfair.'

James and Sirius were walking up the other side, James nudged his best friend when he saw her.

"Sirius, he hissed, "that's the girl I met in Diagon Aleey. Katie Felton!"

"Good morrow to you good lady!" Sirius said bowing low and tipping an imaginary hat. James rolled his eyes and Katie snorted "HAH! Loser!"

"Excuse me?" Sirius asked indignantly, looking very offended.

"I said HAH! Loser!" said Katie, spelling it out slowly as if Sirius was a small child. "What are you thick as well as deaf?"

Sirius was offended. No one had ever talked to him like that before. "Don't speak to me like that" he said softly and dangerously.

"Whatever!" shrugged Katie. "So, James was it? Got any siblings here? I have! His name's Simon and he's in fifth year. He is SO irritating! He's in Ravenclaw but I don't want to be in there. I want to be in Gryffindor but I'm pretty sure I've already told you that before. I hope I like the people in my dorm. I'm having terrible visions that I don't get along with any of them and I'm awfully left out. Am I talking too much? I tend to do that when I get started on a subject. I know I should just close my mouth and…"

James interrupted. "WOAH! Slow down!" Katie blushed and apologised. James and Katie looked for a spare compartment happily talking and joking between themselves. Sirius sulked behind, looking in all of the compartments. He found one with his sister in.

"Hi Gem" he said, sitting next to his twin "and hello gorgeous!" he added noticing Lily.

"Who is he?" asked Lily pointedly. James and Katie had stopped and were standing at the door.

"Well he is my twin brother Sirius, the one with the glasses is James Potter, Siri's best friend and I have no idea who she is!" Gemini explained.

"I'm Katie Felton I really want to be in Gryffindor, which house do you want to be in? Ravenclaw wouldn't be too bad I suppose, my family have been Ravenclaws for generations but I want to break the pattern. Hufflepuff wouldn't be too bad either but I would absolutely die if I was in Slytherin! Wouldn't you?" she took a deep breath as if about to continue but Gemini quickly said "Pleased to meet you, so Lily…."

"It's not nice to change the subject Gem!" said James sarcastically, feeling quite glad that Katie had shut up at last.

"Yeah yeah, whatever you say!" mocked Lily.

"What's it to you red head?" James said sharply to her. Lily scowled. "What does the colour red remind you of Siri?"

"Carrots! Blood! Tomatoes!" Siri shouted randomly. "Danger danger! HIGH VOLTAGE!"

James and Sirius laughed as they left the compartment followed by Katie who was sulking from being cut out of the conversation.

"THEY ARE SOOO IRRITATING!" screamed Lily.

"You'll get used to them, I did!" laughed Gemini. They settled into a nice conversation about how badly they would fail at lessons when a sandy haired boy came to the door.

"Hi! I'm Remus Lupin" he said shyly clutching a collection of comic books to his chest. "I've been told to tell you that we're nearly there so put on your robes." He turned to leave. Lily noticed a sticker on his enormous rucksack that read 'geology rocks' and some weird object was sticking out.

"What is THAT?" asked Lily pointing to it.

"What? Oh! That's my rock polisher! Want to see it?" asked Remus, excited that someone was talking to him at last.

"We're ok" Gemini said and as soon as he left they burst out laughing. Remus Lupin walked along sadly to the next compartment.

Lily talked with Gemini for a while longer but was mainly concentrating on the rolling Scottish hills and countryside. It was all the same for miles and miles around and she was beginning to wonder where on Earth they could hide a huge castle when all of a sudden it appeared from behind a mountain. The entire train was filled with 'OOOHS!' and 'AHHHS!'

When the train pulled up at Hogsmeade station all first years were told to find someone called Hagrid, who turned out to be this massive man. Lily thought that this would be a VERY strange year.

Pleez R&R!!! 


	8. Chapter 8

A/N: Wow! I'm getting these up fast! Thanx to reviewers, you 6! Lol! Wd! I owe ya big time! Lol! 

Chapter 8

Ingrid Dreamstone rose from where she was sat in the Great Hall. Another year of teaching was about to start but first she had to go and see the first years. She picked up her hat and placed it carefully on her neat, brown hair.

"Just off to greet the first years Albus, won't be long" she whispered to a man with an extremely long silver beard who was listening intently to Professor Flitwick.

Meanwhile, outside, the entrance hall was packed with first years, chattering among themselves in worried tones.

"I wonder how they put us into houses?" Lily whispered to Gemini who was standing beside her.

"Probably wants us to show them what we can do!" Gemini whispered back and to the look on Lily's face added "Don't worry, I'm sure you'll be fine!" Before Lily could say anything else the huge doors opened and the first years fell silent.

"Welcome to Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. I am Professor Dreamstone and I will lead you into the Great Hall where you will come to the front and put on the sorting hat when your name is called. The sorting hat will put you into your houses and then you will join your house tables. Any questions? No? Well let's go in!" she announced.

The first years scrambled around to form an 'orderly' line. To Lily's horror Sirius Black and James Potter were stood right behind her.

"Scared Evans?" James whispered but Lily chose to ignore him and started to walk into the Great Hall.

She gasped, she had never seen anything like it before. Candles were floating in mid air. There were four tables which ran along the room. Gryffindor furthest right, then Hufflepuff, Ravenclaw and finally Slytherin. Lily looked up at the ceiling and saw that it wasn't a ceiling at all but the sky. It was a dark and starry night and she was just wondering why it wasn't cold when she heard James whisper "That's bewitched that it, I read it in Hogwarts: A History yesterday. It has everything in it and…"

Lily never did hear what James was going to say for at that moment the hat burst into song.

(We haven't actually written the song yet but we'll get there eventually!!!)

Professor Dreamstone said "When I call out your name you will proceed to the front, try on the hat and it will tell you where you belong. Now, Avery, Jack" a big, burly boy shoved his way to the front. He jammed the hat on his head and it yelled 'SLYTHERIN' he jumped of the stool to the rapturous applause of the Slytherins and went to join that table.

Very soon it came to 'Black, Gemini' and she walked to the front with the whispers of 'good luck' all around her.

'hmmm, another Black I see. Well somehow I don't think you're a Slytherin Black, you're not that way, too pure. Now this is what I like to see! Courage! I know just what to do with you!' that hat said to Gemini, who was dearly hoping that no one else could hear what the hat was saying. 'GRYFFINDOR!' it yelled and the Gryffindor table burst with cheering. 

'Black, Sirius' obviously came next and he jammed the hat on his head grinning 'Oh no!' the hat said to Sirius 'I can see you'll be trouble!' 

"That I am!" whispered Sirius.

'Well, I think you belong in..'

'GRYFFINDOR!'

'YESSSS!!!" screamed Gemini from the Gryffindor table, she didn't know what she'd do if her brother hadn't been put with her.

Next came 'Charleson,' 'Cavert,' 'Chadwick,' 'Davis,' 'Day' and finally 'Evans.'

Lily stepped forward, blood was pounding through her ears. 'This is a tricky one' the hat said to her, Lily was shocked, it seemed to be able to read her mind 'Don't worry love, I'm meant to read you're mind' this was spooky 'Yes dear, everyone thinks it's spooky. I don't actually know where to put you….'

'RAVENCLAW!…NO, NO! HUFFLEPUFF!…NO!….GRYFFINDOR AND THAT'S MY FINAL ANSWER!'

Lily sighed with relief and went to join Gemini who was chatting happily to Sarah Chadwick. 

Soon there was 'Felton, Katie' Gryffindor and 'Lupin, Remus' Gryffindor, who got jeers of 'loser!' and 'geek!' from the Slytherin table. He just frowned nervously and joined his table.

Soon 'Malfoy, Lucius' made Slytherin and then it was 'Potter, James.' He stepped forward and put on the hat but before it touched his head it screamed 'GRYFFINDOR' James took this as a good sign, grinned and joined Sirius and Katie at the table.

Lily groaned, she didn't want to spend the next seven years of her life with Black AND Potter! It would be a living hell! Why is HE in Gryffindor?" she asked Gemini angrily "He's just an arrogant little boy who thinks he knows everything!"

Soon the feast began and Lily forgot all about her troubles with the two boys. It was unimaginable. There were piles and piles of food and once a plate was emptied it was instantly refilled.

"I wonder why the plates are gold this year instead of silver?" one Ravenclaw boy yelled out. 

"Maybe we've been joined by a lycanthrope this year!" shouted another boys back and howled like a werewolf whilst their friends laughed.

Once everyone was full they were led to their dormitories by the prefects. Lily went ahead with Gemini and Sarah whilst James and Sirius stayed behind because Katie was talking to, well being talked at, by her older brother. 

"And if you get out of hand I'll ask my mate in Gryffindor what you've been up to and I'll tell mum!" Simon Felton warned.

"One, no you won't and two, like you have any friends in Gryffindor!" she laughed cheekily making James and Sirius laugh.

"Ok, ok so I don't but I will find out!" he said.

"Yeah yeah, whatever see you soon hopefully not!" she yelled behind her as she walked off. James and Sirius cheered and screamed 'you go girl' as they walked up to the Gryffindor tower.

A/N: 1:pleez r&r and 2:some of that may not have made sense because you meet some of the characters in the chapter before and I haven't finished drafting it yet!


	9. Chapter 9

A/N: For anyone who has looked through the reviews and got a bit scared; the ones from some1 luver are from my friend Laura and the ones from some1 lover are from my friend Kate, just to clear that up!

We got some lovely reviews! Thank you so much to everyone who reviewed! Cookies all round!

Oh yeh, finally, Remus' character is loosely based on Ross Gellar from FRIENDS and my physics teacher! Hehe! I don't own either of them, thank god! Don't worry, he does get better!

Chapter 9

Lily and Gemini got the two beds closest to the window in their new dorm. It was decorated in reds and gold, had a big, gothic window at one end and had five beds in there. The children's things had already been brought up and were in the corner by the door.

The five new Gryffindor girls, Lily had noted were; herself, Gemini, that weird Katie girl, Sarah Chadwick a girl with short, wavy, mousy hair and a friendly smile and Anna Haigh who had blondish hair that was layered round her face and was really pretty. 

Lily soon learned, after talking to Anna, that she really had Quidditch on the brain. Lily listened politely as she talked about her brother John who was a keeper on the Wimpbourne Wasps. Of course, this meant nothing to Lily but she nodded and quickly changed the subject slightly to flying lessons. Lily was terrified. You couldn't learn it by reading a textbook or making notes. It was practical. You either could do it or you couldn't. 

Gemini decided to stick with Lily. She had met her first and she was so nice! Gemini admired Lily's courage to tell people what she really thought of them without being too harsh. Unlike Katie Felton who said what she thought without really thinking about it beforehand. Like when she had asked Remus Lupin why he had a rock polisher when everyone knew that only geeks had stuff like that and why he hadn't been put in Ravenclaw for being smart or Hufflepuff for being a loser. She had got glares from James, who actually seemed to like the strange boy and Sirius had had to choke back laughter. 

Sirius liked Katie, sure she was a girl but she wasn't like the other girls. She didn't giggle. Sirius hated girls that went around in big groups giggling. No, Katie was different. She liked Quidditch, and adventures and PRANKS! At first he wasn't so sure about her. She talked loads and she seemed to prefer James to himself! But as the day went on he talked to her more and realised that they were very alike.

James liked Katie too. But the person he felt oddly drawn to was Remus Lupin, the science weirdo. It wasn't that he felt sorry for him, he didn't think. No, he definitely didn't feel sorry for him. It was a different feeling. Like he needed to open up to Remus and share all his secrets with him. Like he wanted to get to know him and gain his trust. It was weird.

James and Sirius bagged beds next to each other. Andrew Wood was on the other side of Sirius and Remus Lupin was on the other side of James and some small, blond boy was in between Andrew and Remus. The beds were arranged in a circle in the circular room. It was lavishly decorated in red and gold.

Sirius and Andrew Wood talked about Quidditch for hours on the first night. James was nodding and pretending to listen but really he was watching Remus Lupin draw with fascination.

"What's that?" James asked him eventually. Remus looked up in surprise. Not believing that James could be talking to him.

"It…it…it's my magazine. Physics boy! It's about this boy called Russell who fights crime armed only with his trundle wheel, which doubles up as an electron gun. It's fascinating. And his other weapon is a magnet with which he uses to destroy people's television screens." Remus said enthusiastically. 

James had no idea what half of those things was but he looked interested anyway. Sirius and Andrew had stopped discussing Puddlemere United's latest tactics to listen to Lupin. They both choked back laughter but James glared at them.

"James, did you know that if this piece of sandstone was the nucleus of an atom then the electrons would be where Hagrid's hut is! Amazing or what?" he said.

"Fascinating!" laughed Sirius. James nudged him and Sirius shut up.

In the girls' dormitory Anna was telling Katie about her brother and how she was always being recognised for being John Haigh's little sister. Sarah, Lily and Gemini were talking about hair, as girls do.

"I'm gonna try and grow my hair out a bit" said Sarah "it might grow the waves out with it."

"Yeah that would look nice!" said Lily "I hate my hair! It's so…so…so red!"

"Your hair's gorgeous! Listen, if this is because of what Gemini's brother and that Potter boy said, what was his name again Gem? Josh?"

"James"

"Whatever! Then forget about it! They're boys! What do they know! They're self-obsessed, egocentric…BOYS!" Sarah said.

"I guess you're right, I'm tired, night guys, see you in the mornin'" Lily said, snuggling into her new bed. It was weird, but it almost felt like her bed at home. Weird.

The next morning James, Sirius and Andrew came down the stairs from the boys' dormitory looking very tired indeed. 

  
  
"Ooooh! Not had much sleep I see boys!" said the fifth year Gryffindor prefect, Elaine Tang, "I wouldn't worry too much, the teachers aren't as harsh as they normally are on the first day back!" 

Sirius sat down in a chair and closed his eyes. He was nearly asleep when someone slammed their hands down firmly on his shoulders. 

"MORNIN' SIRIUS!" Katie shouted from behind him. He woke back up in a start. "Looking forward to lessons? I'm not! I bet they're going to be sooo boring! I can't wait until the feast this evening! I have the best prank every planned!"

"I wouldn't try pranks at dinner time" said Elaine sceptically from behind them. "I knew a boy who did that and someone said that Merrill Snoop, the caretaker, hung him from his toenails in the dungeons and that he's still there to this very day!"

"I very much doubt it!" said Katie. James and Sirius sniggered at how she could be so rude and bossy with a fifth year. "So…who's hungry? I am! Let's go eat!" she announced and the four of them went down to breakfast. 

They sat down in the middle of the Gryffindor table. They were one of the first one's there. The Gryffindor first year girls soon came down and joined them and everyone was busy eating. 

"Oh no! Potions first! That'll be like pure torture!" said Katie who had heard about the evil potions master. "Professor Kondola is like really really mean and he HATES anyone who's not a Slytherin or really good at potions!"

"Potions doesn't sound that bad. Sounds a bit like food tech." Said Lily from the other side of Gemini.

"And what would you know carrot-top?" James asked quizzically.

"Don't call me that again!" she warned.

"Call you what carrot-top?" he asked mockingly. But before anyone had time to do or say anything else she reached for her goblet of pumpkin juice and tipped it all over James' head.

"Anyone else want to call me names?" she asked steaming with anger. Her whole head was bright red and, to be honest, she did look a bit like a carrot, a very angry carrot.

"Miss Evans!" said a stern voice. She knew who it was. Professor Dreamstone. "Why on Earth did you do that?"

"Well…you see Professor…" she started.

"I don't want to hear excuses. Knowing what James' father was like at school I can guess that you probably had reason for doing it but I don't expect you to do anything like that again. James, I don't want to hear that you've been calling Miss Evans names again. It could be quite easily seen as a form of bullying. Scourgify!" she said and all of the pumpkin juice disappeared off James and the floor. Many of the first years were in total shock, as quite a few of them hadn't seen magic in any form before.

When they had all finished eating the ten Gryffindor first years trailed off down to the dungeons. They got lost a couple of times but they managed to find Elaine who kindly showed them where to go. All of the Slytherins were already there when they arrived. There was a mixture of people but they all had a slightly evil look about them. There were the two girls that Gemini recognised from the shop but no one knew any of the others.

"Yay! Gryffindors! We get to share our lesson with Gryffindors. Fun fun!" said a pale, blond boy from the front of the classroom. He had a pinched look about him and grey, almost colourless eyes. The Gryffindors all immediately decided that they hated him.

"You know you lot don't have the best of reputations yourselves!" piped up Katie from next to James. The Gryffindors all nodded in agreement.

"Well, at least we're not all stuck up, know-alls!" the boy said, encouraged by the other Slytherins.

"You know, I think I speak for all of us when I say that we'd rather be that than evil, slimy…slytherins!" Sirius said.

The blond boy just smirked and ignored them but a dark haired, greasy looking boy shouted "Oooh! Scary Gryffindors trying to scare us! I thought you were meant to be brave? Or is the new definition of brave swotty freaks?"

"Was that spotty? I think you got us mixed up with someone else, let me see, YOU maybe?" Katie shouted very sarcastically to him. The Gryffindors howled with laughter.

The door at the back of the classroom slammed and in walked a very angry looking Professor Kondola.

"I will have none of this insulting inside my classroom. 10 points off Gryffindor for your shouting Miss Felton, I assume considering what your brother's like. Another 10 off for all this noise and finally 20 off because you are all stood up and not ready for my lesson." The Gryffindors all groaned and sat down. "And if I have any more of this silly groaning it'll be 50!"

James sat next to Sirius and Katie sat next to Andrew Wood on the desk next to them. Remus and Peter sat together as did Gemini and Lily and Sarah and Anna.

"Now in today's lesson, our first lesson we will be learning the theory of potion making. That means that there will be no talking, lots of writing and definitely no playing around with ingredients. And yes it is because I don't trust you."

The lesson went in silence. The class copied notes off the board as the teacher wrote them. Most of the pupils thought they had missed most of it as Professor Kondola was writing with such speed.

All of the Gryffindors, and the Slytherins as well, were relieved when the lesson finished but didn't dare talk until they were well back into main school as they were absolutely terrified that Professor Kondola was still watching them.

The next lesson that the Gryffindors had was Charms with the Hufflepuffs. Andrew Wood had already made friends with Amos Diggory so he automatically sat with him. Katie felt left out and sat with some Hufflepuff girl, Rita Skeeter or something.

When the teacher came in James and Sirius burst out laughing as if it was a huge joke. The teacher, Professor Flitwick, was not even 5 foot tall and he had a frizzy, white beard. Lily muttered to Gemini that he looked like Father Christmas. Gemini thought that that was an insult because Lily was giggling. She let Lily know that Nicholas Christmas was a good friend of the family.

Unfortunately for all of them the fist charms lesson also turned out to be a theory lesson. They just wrote down information on levitating charms and draw diagrams. Professor Flitwick did tell them that the next lesson would be a practical so to practice the wand movement in their free time. 

James, Sirius and Katie sniggered, like they needed to do that! Lily was awfully worried though. She spent all night practising the wand movement and saying the incantation over and over again in the common room until it started to annoy people. 

"Can you just shut up for one minute flame head! You're really putting people off!" James said. He was trying to play chess with Sirius whilst Katie was commentating, which was annoying as well but James couldn't pass an opportunity to make Lily mad.

"I'm sorry was I disturbing your homework? No, didn't think so!" said Lily and carried on. James fumed, he was not going to let her get away with this. 

"Well, tomato brains you must be thick if you feel the need to practice. It's so simple!" he said arrogantly.

"Oh yeah? Well let's see you try!" she said. James got out his wand and waved it at a chess piece. "Wingardium Leviosa!" he said and sure enough the figure floated into the air. "You're turn then!" he said.

Lily was scared. She didn't believe that he had actually done it first time and without practising. She looked around nervously, picked up her wand and then "Wingardium Leviosa" the chess piece didn't move. "Wingardium Leviosa" she tried again. Still nothing. She looked like she was about to burst into tears and ran up to her dormitory.

"Nice one!" said Gemini sarcastically and went up to find her friend.

James, Sirius and Katie went on playing chess as if the event hadn't even bothered them slightly.

Pleez R&R!!


	10. Chapter 10

A/N: I know there is quite a lot of difference in the sizes of the chapters. Elaine's chapters average out at about 800 words and Katie's chapters average at about 2500 words. Elaine's chapters are getting longer though it's because she doesn't have much time to write them in.

Chapter 10

The first Quidditch match of the season was scheduled for the second of October. James and Sirius had already decided that they were going to go and get front row seats. The match was the legendary first match of the season, Gryffindor versus Slytherin. Most people already knew that Slytherin would win. They had the best team that the school had seen in years and they knew it. 

Gryffindor wouldn't give up without a fight though. They would play to the end with true Gryffindor spirits. The captain, sixth year Michael Johnston, had been preparing special tactics so that they could score enough goals so that they didn't have to catch the snitch but everyone knew that it wouldn't work because the chasers were just too good. They could intercept the Quaffle at breakneck speed and score like lightning. 

Gemini was in the process of persuading Lily to go. Lily had never seen a Quidditch match before and was curious but decided that it sounded too violent and that people on tiny pieces of wood that high up in the air would make her nauseous. Anna told her that she wouldn't because it was the best game in the world but Lily said that that was only because Anna was obsessed with the game.

Remus Lupin was another who wasn't too keen on the game. He said that not only did it defy all laws of physics but it was way too dangerous as well. James promised to himself that he would take Lupin to the game just to involve him in something and to get him out of the library. He didn't tell Sirius because he knew that he would disapprove of the idea so he kept it a secret and was just going to drag Lupin there on the day.

The night before the game there was lots of shouts of 'GOOD LUCK' and 'YOU'LL BE FINE!' in the Gryffindor common room along with 'YEAH RIGHT!' and 'IT WOULD BE A MIRICLE!' Gemini, Sarah and Anna went over the rules of Quidditch with Lily, just so that she would know what was going on. Lily still said that she wasn't going to go but the others wouldn't take no for an answer.

Sirius wouldn't wake up. He could have been unconscious he was in such deep sleep. James couldn't think of what to do. He couldn't miss the Quidditch game but then again he couldn't go without Sirius. He tried shouting at Sirius and throwing things at him but he wouldn't wake up. 

James was alone in the dormitory and he didn't know what to do. He could shout for help or he could wait for someone else. James had never coped with anything like this before. Once Gemini had fallen off her broom and banged her head. James' mum had just cast a spell and she was fine.

That's what he needed to do. Cast a spell. He flung open his trunk and looked for a spell book that might have something with waking people up. The only one that looked vaguely promising was the Standard Book of Spells Grade One. He flipped through the pages but the information was whizzing past so fast that he didn't take any of it in. He turned to the back and looked through the index. Nothing. It was all about turning matches into pins and levitating objects.

James flopped down defeated. He decided that if Sirius hadn't woken up in another half an hour then he would have to go and find Madam Coo, the school matron. Sirius looked so peaceful but stiff and weirdly straight at the same time. If only he would just wake up then everything would be fine and they would still be able to go and watch the match. But James had a sinking feeling that it wouldn't all be fine.

James heard a click as the door began to open. Remus Lupin entered the room. James rubbed his face.

"James? Are you ok? What's wrong? Why were you crying?" Remus asked in quick succession as he threw his bag and comic books on his bed and went over to Sirius bed.

"Ok, one; I was NOT crying. Two; I can't wake Sirius up. I don't know what's wrong with him. He could be unconscious for all I know." James said.

"Well, looking at him I would say he was unconscious. Why, I could not tell you. He could have fallen over or banged his head or something." Lupin said, checking Sirius pulse.

"That's it! He smacked his head on the ceiling when we were jumping on our beds last night and he kept rubbing one spot but he insisted that it didn't hurt." James said. 

"Didn't anyone ever tell you that you should never go to sleep if you've banged your head? You might get concussion and that's seriously bad!" Lupin shouted angrily. James looked ashamed. His parents had told him that before but he'd never really taken much notice. All he knew was that if he banged his head before bedtime he could stay up late, not that he did it for attention or anything. 

"Is there anything we can do?" James asked worriedly. From the way Lupin was speaking it sounded like his friend could die.

"Well I did read about a spell the other day in the library which wakes people up from any state except death. The Ministry of Magic mostly uses it whenever they need information from someone that's passed out. It should work but I'm not sure whether I'm experienced enough to do it."

"Go on, what's the worst that could happen?" James said encouragingly smiling slightly. Remus pulled out his wand and cleared his throat "Risvegliarsi" nothing happened.

"What went wrong?" asked James. Lupin glared at him. 

"I haven't finished! It's not a simple spell you know! I'm going to have to start again now! Keep quiet next time! Risvegliarsi Sirius, svegliarsi Sirius, svegliarsi dal sonno"

"WHAT HAPPENED?" yelled Sirius sitting bolt upright and flinging his arms around. Lupin, who was standing next to the bed, was thwacked in the face. He fell, hit his temple on the wooden bedposts and smacked to the ground. James screamed. Sirius yelled. 

"Oh my God! Is he ok?" asked Sirius who was rubbing his head.

"I…i…I don't know Siri" said James slowly. He knelt on the floor. Remus' lip was bleeding from where he'd been hit and there was a cut on the side of his head. "It doesn't look good. I think we should get him down to the hospital wing. I'll explain what happened to you on the way down there."

Sirius quickly got dressed and then helped James to drag Remus down to the hospital wing. 

"Goodness gracious! What have we here? Lie him down on this bed please boys then kindly explain yourselves!" Madam Coo said bustling around the hospital wing. "He'll have to stay in here a while I'm afraid."

"And he just got back from his grandma's house as well!" said James.

"Grandma's? But he…..Oh yes! Grandma's house! Well he'll have to stay in over night at least. I expect you boys will want to go out and watch the Quidditch won't you?" Madam Coo asked whilst she healed the cuts and bruises on Remus' face. 

"Sirius I think we should stay" James urged.

"No way! We HAVE to watch Quidditch!" Sirius said. James knew there was no point in arguing with Sirius, he'd only win anyway. He took a final look at Remus and then trudged after his friend. 

The Quidditch match had already started when Sirius and James got down to the pitch. Katie and Anna were sitting right at the front and had saved two spaces next to them. The two boys squeezed in beside them and asked what had happened so far. They found out that nothing had happened as of yet and so could watch the match in peace.

Lily was sat on the row behind in between Sarah and Gemini who were explaining the more obscure rules as they went. Like why when one of the Gryffindor beaters touched the Quaffle it was a foul. Lily didn't really take any of it in but smiled and nodded and felt sick at the heights at which the players were flying. 

"Excuse me Potter" she said when the boys came in late "You're blocking my view" which technically wasn't all that true as the players were that high anyway.

"Oh I'm sorry" he began, starting to move "Oh it's you!" he said when he saw her. "No can do carrot face, I'm quite comfortable where I am." Lily started breathing faster. Her cheeks flushed and her eyes grew large.

"Move Potter or else!" she threatened. James just laughed.

"What are you going to do, tomato breath, hit me or something? I'd like to see you try!" James laughed. And she did. "Ow! That hurt!" He screamed. 

Sirius laughed. "HAH! Beaten by a girl Jamesie boy!" Lily turned to him. "No! Please! I didn't do anything! James did! Hit James again!"

"Thanks!" muttered James, he was beginning to wish he'd stayed in the hospital wing with Remus. At least then he wouldn't have a sore cheek or the humiliation of being hit, by a girl as well.

James turned around and started to watch the match again and planning his revenge on the annoying red head. 

"You're still in my way!" Lily fumed from behind him. He decided that maybe she would be in with a chance of seeing if he switched places with Katie. This caused a lot of angry cries from behind them as they stood up but the game carried on. The Slytherins were winning 100-60 and there had been no sightings of the snitch. 

"McIrish has the Quaffle and he's racing up the pitch" said Rachel Flansborough the current Quidditch commentator "Jim has been on the Slytherin team for two years now and is really starting to shine as a player. He used to not be such a team player but has really focused on his skills. He scores. Slytherin in the lead 110-60."

"This isn't a very good match is it" whispered Anna to Katie. "I mean at one of the matches my brother played in where both teams were almost equally matched. When I say equally matched what I actually mean is that my brother's team was better and so they won but it was still a good match!"

The game went on the same for ages. Gryffindor would gain and promptly lose the Quaffle and then Slytherin scored. The score was up to 250-60 and the Gryffindor knew they had to lose.

"What's this? You know! I think it's the snitch!" Rachel commentated. "And, oh my goodness I don't believe it! Christina Epson the Gryffindor has caught the snitch! The final score is 250- 210 to the Slytherins. Slytherin win the first match of the season but that was a jolly good end to a match by Christina! Well done!"

The Slytherin stands went wild. They knew it had been coming but as many of them still didn't know how to add up they couldn't have told you what the score would be after Christina caught the snitch they were in total shock.

James decided that he should probably go and see how Lupin was now, he felt responsible for the whole thing. He told Sirius where he was going and Sirius decided to go with him. 

They left the stands and bumped into two Slytherin girls. James would have guessed that they were second or third year from the amount of make-up they were wearing but he soon noticed that they were both in his potions class.

"Kate and Robyn right?" Sirius asked seeming to know the girls.

"Yeah, that's right" said the taller of the two. "So, enjoy the match?"

"Yeah it was a good game, well done, but we've got to get to the hospital wing." Said James pulling Sirius away.

"Don't go, we haven't got to know you yet!" said the taller one, she seemed to be the boss of the two. 

"We have to go and see our friend" James urged.

"Friend? That geeks not our friend!" Sirius said appalled at what James had come out with.

"Geek? Then I guess you're talking about that weird Lupin boy. If you're friends with him then I'm not sure we want you to be friends with us." Said the girl.

"I'm not friends with him! I'll be friends with you!" Sirius said hopefully.

"There you are!" said Katie from behind them. "I didn't know where you'd gone! Why are you talking to them?" she asked pointedly about Kate and Robyn.

"Exactly, come on Sirius." Sirius didn't move. "Ok, then I'll go by myself. Katie you coming? Lupin had an accident this morning and I just want to make sure he's ok."

"Rather Lupin than those two!" said Katie with a look of disgust at the two Slytherins and went with James. Sirius stayed and talked to them for ages and then made his way up to the common room.

Remus was all right. He still had a small scar on the side of his head that would remain for a few years but other than that he was fine. James and Katie stayed with him until Madam Coo shooed them out. He was quite a nice boy, when he wasn't constantly talking about science and maths. James felt it his duty to make friends with him, so that's what he would do. Gain his trust and then make friends, it was better to have friends than enemies.

Pleez R&R!!!


	11. Chapter 11

A/N: I'm amazed at how much we've got done so far, and how long it is! We've worked it out and it should be about 30 chapters when it's finished! You haven't even met some of the main characters yet! OMG!

Disclaimer: recognise them? Then they are not mine!

Chapter 11

It was their first transfiguration lesson and everyone as nervous, everyone that is except James and Sirius. As soon as they entered Sirius and James headed straight for the back seats and were promptly followed by Katie and Peter Pettigrew who had been following James for a while now. Sirius had noticed this first and mentioned it to James. Peter was a small, chubby boy with a pointed nose and watery eyes. He was following James' every move and it was beginning to get on Sirius' nerves.

"Not them AGAIN!" whispered Sirius to James. James laughed and then looked towards the front of the classroom where he saw the red head Lily sitting down with Gemini.

Before James had time to shout something to Lily Professor Dreamstone entered the classroom. Her cloak was a deep emerald green and she was carrying her highly polished mahogany wand. The expression on her face gave the impression that she was waiting and in a matter of seconds the class was silent.

"Thank you, that's better. As I am sure you already know, I am Professor Dreamstone, Head of Gryffindor. Before we begin, I will take this opportunity to ask if anyone has any enquiries about the school or their house, then you should come to speak to me or one of the prefects. Now today we will start by turning a pin into a pencil. This isn't too difficult if you are concentrating hard, the incantation is cambiamento. Say it loud and clear and it should hopefully turn into a pencil. Off you go!"

There were sounds of cambiamento everywhere. To his astonishment, James turned his pin into a perfect HB pencil on the first try. Professor Dreamstone saw this and said "Look everyone, Potter has managed to do it. Five points to Gryffindor, well done!"

Lily was furious. "Stupid Potter" she murmured, "he thinks he is sooo great just because he can turn a stupid pin into a stupid pencil. I mean it's not that difficult." She turned back to her own efforts, the pin was as shiny and sharp as it had been at the start of the lesson. She tried to banish all thoughts of James Potter and start again.

Gemini was watching Lily with a smile on her face. "Here let me help you" Gemini swished her wand and said "cambiamento" and as if by magic the pin transformed into a HB pencil. It wasn't as shiny and perfect as James' pencil but it was still a pencil.

Lily tried again, this time she copied Gemini's exact wand movements and using Gemini's pin swished her wand and said "cambiamento" She gave a cry of delight as her pin (well, technically Gemini's pin) turned into a pencil.

Just at that moment Professor Dreamstone came round and awarded Lily five house points. When the bell rang, Lily walked out laden with books and a huge grin on her face. It soon disappeared as soon as she saw James and Sirius appear in front of her.

"Don't turn around, please don't turn around" she whispered, she'd had just about enough of the Dream Duo. Luckily they didn't and were soon joined by a small brunette and a podgy blond boy. She watched at the four laughed at something Sirius had said. Luckily she didn't have to watch too long for Gemini had appeared at Lily's side and they made their way to the next lesson.

Meanwhile Lupin was back in the Gryffindor Common Room, as Professor Dreamstone had told him to meet her there. He couldn't be in trouble already could he? They'd been in school for, what, just over a month? It wasn't possible. He began to wonder how long it was until he could find out what was going on.

Suddenly the Common Room door opened and the headmaster walked in. Not knowing what to do Remus began to babble about how Professor Dreamstone had told him to be in the Common Room and he wasn't skipping lessons.

"It's alright Mr Lupin" Dumbledore said as he held out his hand to stop Remus from saying anything else. "I've come here to tell you that a tree will be planted because of your…special circumstances. Now I know last month you went home to transform but now we will have a tree that will guard the passage to a secret room. The tree will keep others away and strike if anyone gets too close. It is called the Whomping Willow and every full moon a member of my staff will assist you to the Whomping Willow where there will be a trap door. If you pull the knot open there will be a passage that leads to the Shrieking Shack in Hogsmeade. There you will remain until your transformation is complete."

While Dumbledore was speaking Remus nodded and listened. He didn't want to make life difficult for others but due to his childhood he could never be the same again. Finally Remus found his voice and stammered "Thank you Professor Dumbledore, I'll never forget this!"

"It's quite alright. Now I hope you enjoy the rest of your many years at Hogwarts. I must be going and so must you, however there are only five minutes until your break so you may remain here, unless, that is, you want to back to your lessons?" Dumbledore's eyes twinkled and a smile escaped his lips as Remus shook his head.

"Well, I bid you farewell then, Mr Lupin." And with that Dumbledore climbed out of the Gryffindor Common Room leaving Remus to jump around in joy, it was going to be ok after all. He wasn't going to hurt anyone and he could stay at Hogwarts until his seventh year! He was extremely happy and that's how the others found him at break.

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	12. Chapter 12

A/N: If the last chapter seemed a bit short then we apologise but this chapter should make up for it!

Disclaimer: I own nothing except what I made up myself!

Chapter 12

Over the next few weeks, everyone (even the last years) were very intrigued by the Whomping Willow. They had even started a competition to see who could get the closest to the tree without it striking them. It wasn't too long before someone nearly got hurt. It was a bright, sunny day and everyone was outside enjoying the breeze.

Suddenly people started cheering near to the tree as Davey Gudgeon, a Ravenclaw fifth year with light brown hair and hazel eyes, appeared. He seemed to be making his way towards the Whomping Willow, lapping up the cheers as he went. He bent down low and crawled some of the way.

"He's going to do it!" a girl shrieked, as she watched on eagerly. He was only a centimetre or two away from the trunk when suddenly 'THWACK!' a branch came hurtling out from the left and just missed Davey. 'THWACK THWACK THWACK THWACK!' Now the tree was in full throttle it was angry for sure.

Davey, sensing he was in danger of being hurt, started to get up off his knees and run for it. However, he didn't manage to run five steps when the tree managed to hit him. He flew into the air and all the girls gasped whilst the boys watched on helplessly.

"RUN DAVEY RUN!" someone shouted. Davey, who was in mid-air, thought it very stupid advice. How could he run? He was flying through the air. Before he could think about the advice anymore he landed on the ground, far away from the Whomping Willow.

He breathed a sigh of relief along with several others. Soon people had surrounded him.

"Did it hurt being hit?"

"You were soooo brave!"

"You were so close. I bet that if it had stayed still a little while longer you would have touched the trunk for sure!"

"Well done!"

"Oh my! You're hurt, I think we better get you to Madam Coo." His friend Simon Felton helped him to his feet and helped him inside the school.

"Poor Davey, did you see how close he was. And the Whomping Willow nearly took his eye out! He had a very lucky escape!"

Among those who watched were James, Sirius, Remus and Katie. Remus gave a sigh of relief as yet another person tried to touch the Whomping Willow and get to the Shrieking Shack. He returned back to his book only to be disturbed by Katie, James and Sirius' constant chatter.

"Did you see it?" asked Sirius excitedly.

"No Siri, I didn't" replied James sarcastically.

"He was soooo close and imagine if the tree had actually taken his eye out! That would be a disaster!" Katie said.

"For you or him?" asked James smiling a know all smile. Katie smiled back and said "Why would it be a disaster for me?"

James and Sirius exchanged glances and began laughing at Katie's puzzled face.

Suddenly James stopped laughing as he saw who was coming towards them. It was Peter Pettigrew. Now James was sure that he was following them everywhere.

"Hi James!" Peter said looking nervously as Katie, Sirius and Remus stared at him.

"Err.. Hi Peter, what are you doing here?" asked James.

"Just thought I'd come and join you," he said sitting down on the grass.

"Well I'm sorry but we're just leaving. Enjoy the sun!" and with that James, Sirius, Katie and Remus headed back to the Gryffindor Common Room leaving Peter alone.

By now it was getting quite dark and Remus had to make yet another excuse to leave his new friends. If they were suspicious they didn't say anything.

"I've got to go to the toilet. See you later guys" he said.

"Ok, meet you back in the Common Room" said Sirius. Remus made his way to Professor Dreamstone's office. He decided to knock on the door. There was no answer. He waited for a few minutes. "Where is she?" he whispered angrily. By now he was beginning to worry. He couldn't stand there forever now could he? He would have to go by himself.

He walked quietly down the steps and out onto the school grounds. He passed Hagrid's hut and saw that he was making a fire. Just before Remus had even passed Hagrid's hut the bright full moon glared down on him. Suddenly he began to change and lost all thoughts and feelings of himself. All he knew was that he was a werewolf and he was hungry.

Remus ran into the forbidden forest howling as he went. He could smell the food but he couldn't see it yet. He ran deeper and deeper into the forest and stopped when he heard human voices.

"Jupiter is bright tonight" said one of these humans.

"So is Mars" replied the other. As they approached where Remus was they stopped in their tracks.

"Did you hear that?"

"Yes, I think we better go" both of them hurried away but what was odd was that neither of them walked away like humans. Instead the galloping of hooves could be heard. Remus ran out and started to chase them. He was hungry and they were food.

Meanwhile back inside the school grounds, Professor Dreamstone was looking for Dumbledore. She finally found him wandering in the corridors and rushed immediately to him.

"Professor Dumbledore!" she cried. Dumbledore turned around and smiled as he saw her but it soon disappeared as he saw panic in her eyes. "Professor Dumbledore! Remus Lupin is missing!"

"Missing Ingrid?" Dumbledore said.

"Yes, I went to my office and waited there for a few minutes thinking that he was just late. I went into the common room and James, Sirius and Katie said he had gone to the toilet about an hour ago" she paused for breath and Dumbledore said "we must find him quickly!"

He strode to staff room and summoned up as many teachers as possible. "You know it's dangerous so I would like Professor Spinner-Webb and Professor Moon to look in main school. Professor Dreamstone and Professor Kondola to check around Hagrid's hut. And the rest of us will search the forbidden forest and the rest of the grounds." The teachers grabbed their wands and left the room behind Dumbledore.

This was exactly what he had been afraid of when Remus had entered the school. But he knew the risks. He made his way out of school when Hagrid came running in.

"Professor Dumbledore! Professor Dumbledore sir!" he cried.

"Yes Hagrid" Dumbledore replied.

"I 'eard an 'owlin' noise righ' outside o' me hut and so's I thoug' I'd take a look at wha' it was'. I looked outa the window and I saw Remus Lupin runnin' twards the fores'"

"Thank you Hagrid"

Professor Dumbledore quickly went to the forest. Every one step Hagrid took Dumbledore took two. He reached the forest and turned back towards Hagrid. "Please tell the others that Remus is in the forest Rubeus. Tell them to come out here at once." Hagrid did as the older man asked and stepped into the forest.

"HOWLLLL!" Dumbledore stopped and took out his wand "Lumos" he said and a bright light glowed from the end of his wand. He carried on walking in the direction of the howl and it wasn't long before he found Remus Lupin. He began shouting spells but most bounced off him with barely a scratch.

Soon the other Professors joined Dumbledore and together they managed to stun the beast. Kondola levitated Remus towards the Whomping Willow.

Daylight was breaking through the dark night sky and the moon began to fade away. Gradually Remus changed back into himself and he began to stir.

"What's going on?" asked Remus, looking confused.

"Don't worry Mr Lupin. I think we had better take you to the hospital wing." Replied Professor Dreamstone. They led him away from the Whomping Willow and back towards the castle.

Madam Coo came quickly and attended to Remus. Dumbledore sat and watched, then asked her to leave. She stared at him as if he was mad but decided she'd better leave.

As she closed the door Dumbledore began talking to Remus. "Remus, tonight you did not transform inside the Shrieking Shack. Instead you went into the forbidden forest and wounded a centaur. Fortunately you didn't harm him too deeply and so he will live. Now, I want to ask you why you didn't wait for Professor Dreamstone?"

"I thought I could go to the Shrieking Shack as I've done it before. I'm sorry." He said, not looking directly at Dumbledore who sat and listened to him explain.

"That's alright Mr Lupin. Next time I suggest you wait for a teacher. I will now leave you to return to full health and bid you farewell." He closed the door leaving Remus to think about what he had done.

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	13. Chapter 13

A/N: thanks Kate for your marvellous reviews, they were very entertaining! Lol! Evil things should happen soon! Lol! Now on with the story! Oh yeah, and Remus not going back to lessons: if you were a swot tell me, seriously, would you actually want to go back to lessons given the choice? The answer is a resounding NO!

Disclaimer: nope don't own it!

Chapter 13

Halloween was drawing near and all the first years had heard about the fantastic feast that was planned. Everyone was excited, as the holiday was a big celebration in the wizarding world.

Sirius had been wildly dreaming of all the food that there could possibly be whilst James had been reading the Quibbler. It was better than the Daily Prophet was because it wasn't as serious and the articles were funny, even if they were unintentionally so!

One of the articles that had struck him was one written by the new and highly acclaimed Cat Star. She had only been writing for about six months but already she was getting undercover reports and on the spot news coverage.

The article he was reading at the moment was about Puddlemere United's downfalls. He found it intriguing how she could find faults in such a fantastic team. Why did she have to put fans down? But it did make him think about whether he actually supported them.

She had a knack for trying to convince people that they were in the wrong. And it seemed to work. Only last week there had been a report telling people that Bertie Bott's Beans were poisonous and that people should switch to her own brand of jelly beans. It worked. Sirius actually stopped buying his regular sweets and switched to her product.

James wasn't as easily fooled by marketing campaigns as Sirius was. He knew not to believe everything that you read but he was awfully tempted and, thinking about it, he hadn't had any Bertie Bott's in weeks!

All the girls had been following her massive campaign to get make-up testing on house elves abolished. Lots of people didn't even know that they tested make-up on house elves so were shocked and well informed at the same time. That's the reason why everyone loved Cat Star.

James hated astronomy. It was one of the subjects he was hopeless at. It involved the muggle subject, maths and so anyone from a muggle background or who were fascinated with muggles, or in one case physics, were naturally great at it.

Sirius, for some weird and unknown reason, was actually good at it. He could map the stars and name them with ease as well as knowing lots about the formation of the universe. He was a bit of a swot at it actually. He knew what Betelgeuse was and Andromeda as well as describing the stages of a star from birth to death. James thought it was scary.

Lupin was good at astronomy too. He could calculate the orbital speeds of planets and the diameter of their orbit in seconds. He liked physics and especially space. He wanted to boldly go where no wizard had gone before, but not before getting the highest possible marks on his OWLs and NEWTs and becoming a prefect and head boy and everything he felt he needed to do at school.

The school meals were always fun. There was always some immature third or fifth year that thought it would be funny to shove things up their nose or throw something at someone. Lily had done this, thrown food that is, at James plenty of times, and vice versa of course. A meal wasn't complete without Lily and James being horrible to each other.

At the Halloween feast Lily had found herself sitting right next to James. She hadn't wanted to by any means but Gemini had wanted to sit with her brother for a change so Lily had joined her, unaware of what would come of it.

"And then I said 'What's your name again? SNIVELLUS?'" laughed James. Sirius burst into laughter too. "Snivellus," he sighed, "that's a good one!"

"I didn't think it was particularly ingenious," said Lily who was determined to have her say after being forced to sit next to her worst nightmare.

James turned around. It was her! She seemed to be everywhere he looked and she always had her say at everything. Even if she was completely wrong, which, it has to be said, wasn't very often, she would still argue to the end.

"What do you want carrotface?" he asked with disgust.

"I'm sitting with my friend and talking. I'm sorry, I didn't realise there was a rule against that!" she said, her voice dripping with sarcasm.

"Well it's against the rules when you sit near me and do it. You know, I find you and your disturbing red hair quite offensive" he said, mock seriously. Sirius snorted with laughter and Gemini nudged him.

"Well I find you and your four eyes offensive too! As well as your cocky attitude, your huge ego and your stupid, stupid sticky out hair!" she said turning red.

"Calm down guys. Stop fighting! You both have some fair points. Yes James, she does seem to join into all of your conversations, no offence Lils and yes Lily, Snivellus is a pathetic nickname for someone!" Gemini said. She sat down in between them and Sirius on the other side of James.

"Gemini! I so do not! Why would I want to join into one of their conversations?" she asked with disgust.

"Yeah! And Snivellus is a good name, Gemini!" James said.

"Snivellus isn't even a word!" Lily shouted at him.

"Well is now!" James shouted back. At this time the teachers started to notice that something was going on and started whispering between one another trying to decided what to do.

"You can't just make new words up speccy four eyes!" Lily said as Professor Kondola came down from the teachers' table to sort the problem out.

"I can and I will tomato head!" James yelled. Sirius was trying to restrain him but failing quite badly.

"You are such an arrogant………idiot!" Lily screamed. The rest of the hall was completely silent and staring at the two of them. Lily got embarrassed and only just noticed Professor Kondola.

"Right, you two. Detention for the both of you. You will be notified of the time and place." He said nastily. "Oh and Potter, if I ever hear you calling anyone Snivellus I will personally see that you get at least a month of detentions." And with that he turned and left the hall, his cloak billowing behind him.

Lily was terrified and had to fight back the tears. She didn't like being told off, especially by teachers, she liked to stay in teachers' good books, it was always useful. She started to walk out of the hall so that she could be alone when Gemini came and told her to sit back down.

James on the other hand merely shrugged and went back to laughing with Sirius.

"Amazing" sighed Sarah Chadwick from the other side of Gemini. "How do boys do that?"

"Do what?" asked Andrew Wood who was sat beside her.

"Well, be so unemotional about real life issues, like that there where James just sat back down and pretended none of that happened even though he got so worked up about it at the time. But then they get so carried away and wrapped up in their own world when it comes to Quidditch!" she continued.

"That's not true!" he said, surprised.

"Yes it is. Boys seem to eat, sleep, drink and virtually live Quidditch!" she said sternly.

"Well I like Quidditch as much as the next guy and I don't see it like that. Quidditch is a hobby. A thing that we support and follow but we're kind and sensitive too." Andrew said. Then he blushed slightly and looked at the ground. "If…if you go out with me…I'll show you" he managed to stammer out.

"Yeah ok!" grinned Sarah. The biggest of big smiles was now plastered across her face. She nudged Gemini and told her and Lily and Andrew went back to talking about who would win the league this year with his friends.

When the feast was over Lily, Gemini and Sarah made their way back up to the Gryffindor Common Room.

"Well I think that its perfectly horri……" Lily started but something made her stop dead in her tracks, as well as everyone else on the busy corridor.

James, Sirius, Katie and Remus stayed behind. They were planning a prank to turn Snape and Malfoy's robes pink. So far they had the spell all they needed now was Snape and Malfoy. The hall was clearing and there was a huge snake of people streaming out of the door. It was impossible to find anyone, even if you were stood right next to them.

Then they saw them. Malfoy had left a piece of paper, probably a letter from his mummy Sirius joked, at the table and had to go back for it. Naturally the rest of Slytherin first year waited for him.

"Fermata" James and Sirius shouted pointing their wands at the two Slytherins.

"Girare rosa" shouted Katie and Remus to complete the spell.

"Scintilla" added Katie. Making the robes glittery to add to the effect. Then they ran away, not wanting to be caught by ten angry Slytherins.

They made it all the way up to the Transfiguration corridor when something made them, and everyone around them, stop dead in their tracks. The candles flickered and then blew themselves out. The corridor was pitch black.

"Dumbledore will die" came a voice through the air. It was a woman's voice. Sickly sweet and high but also dangerous and evil. "Soon. It will happen soon!" There was a flash of lightning and then everything was back to normal. The candles lit themselves again.

Pupils were scared and stayed where they were. Elaine Tang ran off to find a teacher. She found Professor Dreamstone making her way towards the Gryffindor corridor.

"There is nothing to be afraid of" she informed them. "It is a silly, childish prank. Once we find the culprits then they will be severely punished. Let this be a warning to them."

Something about the situation, maybe it was the candles, or the lightning or just the whole thing let everyone know that it most likely wasn't a childish prank. No matter what the teachers did to cover it up. It was a serious message from a powerful witch. The only problem was; who?

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	14. Chapter 14

A/N: sorry this chapter wasn't up before but Elaine had it and I've only just been able to put it up!

Chapter 14

Lily was scared and not for the first time either. This time it was flying. She had never flown before and all week she had been worrying. They arrived at the school grounds before most of the other Gryffindors so Lily confided in Gemini.

"I'm scared Gem, what if I fail?"

"You won't! It's easy once you've learnt how to control it!"

"You're only saying that because you know how to fly!" said Lily.

"Yeah, but when I first…" began Gemini but was interrupted by someone shouting her name.

"GEMINI!" shouted Sirius.

"Hi Sirius" she replied, "how are you?"

"Very well thank you." They began to talk and Lily felt left out. Suddenly James came sidling over to her, "hi carrot-head, not scared are you?" he asked smiling sweetly.

"N-o!" she lied, hoping she looked as confident as he did.

"Yeah right!" he snorted.

"Leave her alone James!" said Remus coming over to them. She smiled, relieved that someone had stepped in to help.

The rest of the Gryffindors came shortly followed by a tall, skinny looking woman. She had on flying robes and a whistle was tied round her neck.

"Good morning Gryffindors! I am Professor Spinner-Webb and I will be teaching you how to fly. I'm sure most of you are eager to learn how to fly aided by a broomstick so I shall begin. I would like you to hold out your wand arm and say 'up.'" Everyone did as they were told and said 'up.' To Lily's surprise her broom came up straight away and her fear of flying became less. She looked over to Gemini and motioned that her broom had come up straight away. Gemini understood and gave her a thumbs up.

However, not everyone was having it as easy as Lily though, Peter had a fear of flying ever since he was young. His broom wriggled around lazily on the floor, as he tried to command it up. He didn't want to be in this class but if he was going to become friends with James Potter, he had to show some sort of bravery. After all, the sorting hat did put him in Gryffindor, the bravest house there is.

He stopped trying to make his broom fly up to his hand as he knew he would never get it to. Instead, now the class was mounting their brooms and he realised that Professor Spinner-Webb was speaking to them.

"I'll be watching, off you go you two." Peter watched as Sarah tried to fly. Her face was set in deep concentration and she managed it. Her landing was a bit rough but with practice she would become better.

Next it was James' turn. He did it perfectly first time and even said "who's the best!?" Sirius, who was standing next to him, said "I am of course!" and they burst out laughing.

"Ok class, now Evans and Pettigrew, try." Peter and Lily mounted their brooms and tried to fly off the ground. Lily managed to hover about a centimetre off the ground, then came back down again. Peter couldn't do it at all. He tried his hardest and it wasn't working. He felt himself beginning to blush under the gaze of everyone, including James. What would James think if he couldn't even get off the floor? Even that Lily, who was a muggle born, could do it. He tried one last time and finally he flew off the ground and into the air.

Professor Spinner-Webb whistle began to blow and most of his classmates began shouting for him to get down. He couldn't, he was stuck in a tree. Professor Spinner-Webb muttered something under her breath and flew off to get him out of the tree. He said "thank you" to her as they landed on the ground. His heart was beginning to beat very fast as his face reddened as he noticed everyone staring at him.

"Right, I want you to try again before the end of the lesson, Mr…" she started at Peter looking for his surname.

"P..P..Pettigrew" he stammered.

"Mr Pettigrew, I think you should sit down for a bit. Homework will be to study and practice the word 'up' like you mean it! Off you go!" she blew her whistle again and the rest of the class tried yet again. As soon as the lesson ended Lily and Gemini talked about flying.

"I can't believe I just commanded a broomstick to fly! Wow, it's so exciting!" Gem laughed at Lily's enthusiasm and said "Yeah, and it'll be even better when you get to fly on it properly. I can't wait to fly again, it's been ages! I've got the Stardust 9 but James has the…"

What James had, Lily never found out because someone came over to them and said "Hi carrot-head, hi Gemini!" That person was Kate. As usual she was with Robyn and not far behind them was Lucius Malfoy.

"Just ignore them Lils," Gemini said, trying to move Lily on and side step past the Slytherins.

"She can speak for herself can't she? Anyway, I was wondering whether carrot-head, sorry, Lily would like to be friends?" Kate said sweetly. Lily studied her for a second, she sounded genuine and Lily didn't want to have any enemies, apart from James and Sirius of course. She smiled back and said "ok Kate, let's be friends." Kate smirked and gave Robyn a significant look. Lily ignored it and began walking away arm in arm with Gemini towards Greenhouse number 3.

"Hello Gryffindors and Hufflepuffs. I'm sorry I don't know your names properly yet, still! As you know, I am Professor Sprout, you're herbology teacher here at Hogwarts. I would like to start this lesson by informing you of what we will be doing today. We will be learning about Mandrakes this year but we won't be handling them until next year, unfortunately. Right, who knows what a Mandrake is?" she peered around the class expectantly. No one moved and there was an eerie silence in the greenhouse.

After a few minutes she decided to tell them. "Well, a mandrake is a plant. It has a high-pitched scream, which from and adult plant can be deadly. Mandrakes are used for curing people and animals that have been petrified. Please open your books and copy out these notes." She waved her wand up towards a blackboard and instead of the coal black it was filled with snow, white chalk.

There was a mad scramble as everyone dug around in their bags looking for Quills. James took this opportunity to talk to Sirius.

"So, Siri, I'm bored!" he said.

"Yeah, well, so am I! We've got to do something at this school so that we will be remembered forever!" Sirius replied with an evil glint in his eyes.

Meanwhile, Lily and Gemini were having a totally different conversation at the front of the room.

"What do you think of school so far?" Gemini whispered across the desk.

"A lot different from what I thought it would be like! I even nearly didn't come because I thought it was a prank from one of the boys at my last school!" replied Lily.

"Well, it's better than I thought it would be too. I've always wanted to come to Hogwarts ever since I can remember. James and Sirius didn't really mind where they went, as long as they weren't separated."

Lily smiled and said, "I'm glad they feel like that. No one would ever care enough ever say that about me!" How wrong she was, thought Gemini. They both carried on working and then headed back up towards the warmth of the castle.

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	15. Chapter 15

A/N: Thank you big gay archie for reviewing. I'm sure you're happily reading this in your big, pink castle in Balamory. Thank you also to everyone else who has reviewed.

Chapter 15

Quidditch, best thing at Hogwarts as far as James, Sirius and almost everyone else at the school was concerned. The whole school turned out to watch the matches and the winning team always got a huge party in the common room, unknown to the teachers of course. Well sort of, the heads of houses knew perfectly well what was going on but were happy about the result as well so they let it go on.

The match today was Gryffindor versus Ravenclaw. Ravenclaw were favourites to win, they had already thrashed Hufflepuff 250-20 and were set to be this years champions. The Gryffindor team was still looking forward to the match as they had been training hard and had some great moves up their sleeves.

Michael Knightly, the Gryffindor Quidditch Captain and superb beater was determined to win the cup this year, no matter how hard they had to train. He was in his final year but hadn't been able to play all his sixth year because of an injury to his arm. It meant he couldn't fly, hold a bat or anything to do with his favourite sport. He still helped coach the team though and had got them to a very high standard. Slytherin had been the favourites for the cup this year but ever since Gryffindor's fluke victory Slytherin were out of the running and Ravenclaw had taken their place.

The Gryffindor team consisted of the three chasers; Chrissy Weasley, Malerie Lovegood and Daniel Sparrow. They were best friends and had been since first year. This meant that now, in their sixth year they could almost read each other's minds. The two beaters were Michael Knightly and Robert Brown. Michael Knightly was going to try and go professional after he left school and had won many 'young Quidditch player of the month' awards. Robert Brown however was a last minute replacement after the previous beater had to visit her grandmother in hospital. The keeper, Marco Robson, was in his seventh year also but wanted to work at the Ministry rather than go professional. The seeker Christina Epson was a second year and a brilliant find by Knightly.

James and Sirius had bet 5 Galleons between them, all the money they had in the world, that Gryffindor would win and go on to win the cup. Anna said that the chances of that happening were slim but when her brother was at school Gryffindor won the cup every single year. Sirius told her to shut up about her stupid brother and concentrate on life today. Anna said that she wouldn't and so Sirius didn't want to sit with her.

James, Sirius, Katie and Remus, followed by Peter of course, ate their breakfast really fast on the day of the match and went to get front row seats in the Gryffindor stands. They went an hour and a half early to get those seats and they wouldn't move for the world. Well, Remus would have, he didn't see the point in Quidditch. It was just a load of people on brooms throwing balls about. Sirius said that there was a deeper, almost metaphorical meaning to Quidditch than 'a load of people on brooms throwing balls about,' James agreed but Remus rolled his eyes and got out a book.

Remus had been deeply studying a book called 'Please Release Me, Let Me Go' by Bert Dinky. It was about werewolves and attempts at cures. James and Sirius had questioned him greatly about this, since they weren't doing it in lessons, but he just said that he found that particular area of magic interesting. Sirius said that werewolves seriously creeped him out, pun intended. Remus said nothing.

Lily, Gemini and Anna went down to the Quidditch stadium ten minutes before the match. They were only that late however because Lily kept protesting. She shared Lupin's point of view that the game was just a bunch of people on brooms with sports equipment. Anna and Gemini had to physically drag her down to the Quidditch pitch in the end. They had to squash up on the back row because they were almost the last ones there.

"Welcome to the third match of the Quidditch season. As we know, Gryffindor beat Slytherin and then Ravenclaw thrashed Hufflepuff and now it's Gryffindor versus Ravenclaw. Ravenclaw are favourites to win this match but I'm sure that Gryffindor will give them a run for their money. The players make their way onto the pitch. It's Weasley, Lovegood, Sparrow, Knightly, Brown, Robson and Epson for the Gryffindors and Felton, Grace, Burge, Gudgeon, Peter Boston and Ullman for the Ravenclaws. Michael Knightly has put together a great team for the Gryffindors this year, as has Marcia Grace. This is set to be a great game and we have the perfect conditions for a fantastic game of Quidditch" Rachel Flansborough said from the teachers stand where she was commentating from.

She was right, it was perfect flying conditions. The sun was shining, but not too bright that the players couldn't see. There was little wind but enough to help them fly their brooms. And the whole school had turned out to watch them play. Many of the crowd were excited because the renowned journalist, Cat Star, had turned up and was sitting next to Dumbledore in the teacher's stands.

Cat Star was glamorous yet she didn't seem to try too much with her appearance. She wore a simple sky blue robe, her blonde hair was perfect and layered stylishly around her face, which was prettily decorated with pastel shades of make up. She sat with perfect posture with her parchment on her lap and her pink quill resting in her hand. She talked happily with Professor Kondola, which surprised many people and made notes on her parchment.

Professor Spinner-Webb stepped into the centre of the pitch and had a word with both teams. They mounted their brooms, she released the balls and blew her whistle. They were off. Red and blue dots whizzed round the pitch throwing the Quaffle back and forth. The seekers flew high above the match whilst the beaters were having a merry old time with the Bludgers.

"Felton, Burge, Felton, Grace…ouch! That's got to hurt!"

The crowd winced as Marcia Grace got hit with a bludger. Her eyes filled with tears but she ignored the pain and carried on. Having lost the Quaffle she went in search of it.

"Weasley, Sparrow, Weasley, Sparrow, Lovegood… SCORE! 10-0 to Gryffindor and it's Simon Felton with the Quaffle."

The match carried on much the same way, Ravenclaw would get it nearly to their end and then lose it and Gryffindor would score. Michael Knightly had this plan that he would be carefully stationed at the Ravenclaw hoops so that when their chasers got anywhere near it he could scare them into losing the ball and Gryffindor could score. This worked up until twenty minutes into the game when Gryffindor were 120-0 up. Donald Peter, a Ravenclaw beater finally noticed this pattern and aimed a bludger at Knightly's back. There was a sickening crack as it smacked into him and then he limply fell to the ground.

The Gryffindors booed as they had just lost their best player whilst the Slytherins cheered and laughed. Anything bad that happened to any Gryffindor was ALWAYS a good thing. Robert Brown was terrified. Now it was just him, his bat and his broom against two Ravenclaw guys who were older, stronger and better at Quidditch than him. He hadn't wanted to play in this match. He was on the reserve team. It was all Philippa Harwood's fault that her grandmother was ill, no that was a horrible thing to think. Ah well, it was true and he flew away as fast as his broom would go.

"Felton, Grace, Felton, Grace, Burge and Ravenclaw score again. They've made a strong comeback after Gryffindor lost their best player. Ravenclaw are sure to win the cup now! The score stands at 140-120 to Ravenclaw and Marcia Grace has the Quaffle."

Christina Epson was determined to catch the snitch now. She was certain that Knightly's plan would work so well that it shouldn't matter whether she caught the snitch or not. But now the outcome of the game was entirely down to her. If she caught the snitch then Gryffindor won and had a chance at winning the cup, if Jack Ullman caught it then Ravenclaw would win. It was a lot of pressure to put on one small person and she was petrified.

"It's 180-120 to Ravenclaw and there has been no sightings of the snitch yet. The Ravenclaw team really is superb this year. Look at this, Marcia Grace is only a third year and she is carrying on fine even with an injury. Her fellow chasers, Simon Felton and Annie Burge are helping her by making her passes quite short. Excellent strategy, oh! And Ravenclaw score again, 190-120!"

Michael Knightly lay on a stretcher at the side of the pitch with Madam Coo tending to his wounds. He had bruised his back when the bludger hit him and badly broken his leg and sprained his wrist when he landed. He watched the match, shaking his head. He knew they were out of the running. Whenever one of his chasers got close to the Quaffle a bludger came hurtling their way. He closed his eyes and concentrated on the pain.

Christina Epson felt something brush past her arm. She squinted her eyes and looked around. Sure enough, there was the snitch about a metre below her. Jack Ullman had seen it two and he sped in from the far end of the pitch. She reached out her arm and urged her broom onwards. It was quite an old broom but it was well looked after and quite speedy. Jack Ullman closed in on it at the same time she did. It looked like they were about to crash. The whole stadium held their breath. Christina reached that little bit further and wrapped her fingers around the tiny, struggling ball. But instead of the applause she was waiting for, and the possible boo she heard a bone shuddering creak.

The stadium shuddered and then again. "OUT!" yelled Dumbledore, "EVErYBODY OUT!" people began filing out of the stands. Screaming and chaotic as they went. Lily, Gemini and Anna went out first they were too scared to talk. Nobody knew what was happening and went to stand out on the grass.

"Sirius?" called Gemini madly searching for her brother, "Sirius where are you?" she turned to Lily. "They were right near the front. What happens if they can't get out in time? What happens if they're stuck in there and something bad happens? Oh Lily what should we do?"

"Calm down Gem, I'm sure they'll be fine. Don't worry." Lily said hugging her friend, but she wasn't too sure herself. She put on a brave face as the stadium creaked again. It shuddered and then there was a pause. Nothing happened for about 30 seconds. Everybody waited with baited breath and then the Slytherin stands began to slump in the middle.

All of a sudden the stands began to sink one by one. People screamed, people cried, people ran around like headless chickens wondering what to do. Prefects rounded up their houses and the head boy and girl went to help the teachers.

It was like when you lay out dominos and then nudge one of them and they all push each other down. It all collapsed in a circle and ended at the Gryffindor stands.

"SIRIUS!" screamed Gemini.

"What?" he asked from behind her.

"Oh Sirius! I'm so glad you're ok! I thought you were still in there and hadn't made it out in time. I was so scared that you…that you…" she said and promptly burst into tears. Sirius hugged her and told her that everything would be ok and that everyone made it out in time.

"That's her," someone said from behind them. They looked around, it was Elaine Tang. "The short one with dark hair." Katie looked around. She was the only short girl with dark hair in their group. "M..me?" she asked.

"Katie Felton?" Professor Spinner-Webb asked. Katie nodded. "I'm afraid you have to come with me. We have some bad news."

"What is it?" Katie asked, she was very scared.

"Well I don't think I'm really the right person to tell you.." the teacher began. "Tell me, please," the young girl pleaded, tears already forming in her eyes. 

"It's your brother, I'm afraid he didn't quite make it out of the stadium in time before it collapsed. I'm really sorry Miss Felton but he died. Professor Dreamstone would like to talk to you about it now. Follow me, I'll show you to her."

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	16. Chapter 16

A/N: once again, thank you to everyone who has reviewed. SOME of them are really useful, others, like the ones from positron aren't! lol! Happy birthday to positron for 11th June! U ROCK! Hehe!

Be warned! This is a VERY long chapter from the lovely Elaine!

Chapter 16

After the terrible Quidditch incident everyone felt very depressed. Especially Katie. Her brother's funeral was scheduled for the following Sunday and Katie missed the weekend and the Monday from school. But to everyone's surprise she was back again for the Tuesday. Yes, she was depressed and yes, she didn't talk much but she was still there and everyone thought she was very brave.

James and Sirius came up with lots of plans to cheer people up and finally settled on their master plan. A midnight adventure. They suggested this to Remus, Peter and Katie along with Gemini and Lily.

"It's going to be tonight. We'll meet in the common room at exactly midnight. Anyone who objects will have me and James to answer to!" Lily looked over to Gemini. She knew what Lily was thinking, she didn't want to go along but she didn't want to be the spoilsport of their fun. She would have to go.

All day their minds were on the adventure. This affected their concentration and finally Professor Dreamstone lost her patience. "Will you lot stop daydreaming about the weekend and concentrate on the work? Honestly, kids these days! Lily and Gemini I would have expected more of you than this childish behaviour!"

Soon the bell rang for the end of the last lesson for the week and James, Sirius, Remus, Peter, Lily, Gemini and Katie rushed outside as quickly as they could. They all went to the common room to finalise their plans but Peter decided to go to the toilet. He returned a few minutes later with a huge smirk on his face and James noticed.

'Why is he smiling?' James thought, 'well smiling's not really the word, he's smirking. Why's he so happy?' Then a horrid thought struck him, 'what if he's told someone? I knew we couldn't trust him! The evil, double-crossing…' James was interrupted from his thoughts by Sirius prodding him quite hard in the arm, "OW! What?" he asked, a little irritated at being poked.

"I said, should we take some food from dinner with us so we can have like a midnight feast?" James thought for a second before nodding his head in approval. They would have to sneak some food from dinner or something as none of them had any food on them.

Lily got up and headed towards the girls' dormitory, 'why do they always have to do really daring things? What if we get caught? They might chuck us out, then I'd have to go back to a muggle school and do really boring subjects like maths!' she couldn't get the picture of Petunia smirking at her as she came home in tears out of her mind. She shook her head in frustration, 'but they won't get caught' she thought. She would make sure of it. She wouldn't let Sirius or James or anyone put a step out of line.

She thought about it for a while longer until Gemini and Katie came up together laughing at something. Lily felt hurt, Gemini was her best friend. NOT KATIE'S!!! As they came over to her Lily felt herself becoming hot in the face and couldn't meet eyes with Katie.

"Are you looking forward to tonight?" Katie asked before continuing again "I am. I've never had a midnight adventure before. I'm so hyper and I haven't had a taste of chocolate at all! Isn't that weird!" She paused for breath and Lily decided to interrupt. "As long as we don't get caught I'm up for it."

Katie looked at her as if she was going mad. "But not knowing whether or not you're going to get caught is part of the fun! I think I might go get changed now. I hate wearing black all the time, it's so depressing. Don't you think the uniform should be pink, or purple or something? It would be more vibrant at least and warming. Or maybe we could choose our own uniform, I know what, I'm going to write a letter to Professor Dreamstone and ask her about changing the uniform, I'm sure she'll agree. What do you think?" she peered at both Lily and Gemini expecting them both to agree with the dull uniform and congratulate her for thinking of the idea.

Gemini spoke first, "erm…I think that…well I think it's a great idea!" she said and put on a fake smile to try and shut Katie up.

"Yeah, I wish I'd thought of that. You're so clever" Lily said unenthusiastically, however Katie didn't catch the tone and seemed satisfied with the answers so she started jumping around madly back towards her own bed.

When she was out of earshot Lily whispered, "she's strange, don't you think?"

"A bit," replied Gemini, "But good strange. She's really quite funny and I think James might fancy her!" Lily was annoyed to find that James fancied such a strange person, but didn't express her feelings.

Later that evening, down in the Great Hall, James, Sirius, Remus, Peter, Gemini and Katie each carried a bundle of food in their laps. Lily had refused to do so as she didn't want to be spotted and the thought of doing as Sirius and James said made her decline their offer immediately. She didn't want to follow their orders, she wasn't someone they could boss around. She fumed silently as James and Katie laughed at something Sirius had said. She returned back to the conversation at her end of the table and listened as Gemini said, "Where do you think we're going tonight then?"

Lily thought and said, "Somewhere where we won't get caught I hope!"

Gemini drank some pumpkin juice and said, "Yeah, but it has to be exciting." Lily tucked a strand of hair behind her ear before saying, "I don't care where we go. I just don't want to be caught after only three months. I really don't want to show Petunia that I couldn't even last here for half a year. She was so against me coming here. She'd probably laugh and say I'm not clever enough to go to a normal school, let alone a wizarding school."

They talked and ate some more and left the hall with Sirius, James, Peter, Remus and Katie.

In the common room they were left alone. They chose to sit in the corner with the comfy chair by the fireplace as it was getting colder now approaching Christmas.

James began to speak "Well, so we're all agreed. We're meeting here at midnight or later, depending on what time people leave the common room. Eat the food. Also we're going to the Slytherin common room to play a prank on them. Especially Snivellus!" there was a mad gleam in his eyes.

Sirius spoke, "I think that we should knock on the entrance and run! It would be really fun and we wouldn't get caught!" Lily liked that idea, it was simple and nothing would go wrong, hopefully.

Later that night, Lily set her alarm for midnight, when she would wake Gemini and unfortunately Katie. She lay down on her bed and soon fell asleep. Not long after she heard a loud beeping noise coming from under her pillow. She woke up and brushed away the sleep. She decided to wake Gemini up first and went over to her bed.

"Gemini" she whispered. Gemini didn't even flicker an eyelid. "Gemini, wake up!" she tried again. Gemini rolled onto her side this time. Lily decided to use a different tactic this time and prodded Gemini. This time Gemini did wake up and said, "what time is it? It's still dark! It can't be morning yet!"

"Gemini, the midnight adventure. Wake up please!" Lily was getting very frustrated now. Finally Gemini woke up properly and got out of bed unhappily. "Who's stupid idea was this anyway?" she wondered.

She climbed out of bed groggily and tripped over her slippers. She fell to the floor and woke up Katie. 'oh no' thought Lily 'now she's awake!' Katie put on her soft, pink dressing gown and bounded over towards Gemini and Lily.

"Er..Gemini? what are you doing on the floor?" she asked anxiously.

"Well I thought I'd just crawl under my bed to sleep, Katie." Seeing Katie's wide-eyed expression she quickly added "joke…it was a joke!"

"Oh" replied Katie and waited for Gemini to get off the floor. Together they went down the stairs to find James, Sirius and Remus already there. Gemini asked them where Peter was and Sirius told her that he wouldn't wake up so they decided to leave him as he'd only be a drag anyway.

Quietly they brought out the food they had collected from dinner and put them onto the centre of the floor where everyone dug in. It didn't take long to finish the food as James and Sirius took most of it for themselves.

Soon they decided to search for the Slytherin common room. They wandered around slowly thinking of where to look. Lily was scared but tried not to shoe it. Unfortunately James saw and waited for her as the others walked off.

"You scared Evans?"

"No, why should I be?"

"Because you're a goody two shoes and you don't want to be told off for anything. Am I right?"

"…No" faltered Lily. "I'm not scared." James looked at her with a challenging glare.

"Ok, prove it!"

"What?"

"I said, prove that you're not scared!"

Lily's heat began to beat really quickly and she felt even more terrified than before. "Why should I have to prove it?"

"Chicken! You're a chicken!" James began in a mocking voice.

"Shut up! All right, I'll prove it. How?"

"I think that you should be the one to knock on the door of the Slytherin common room." Lily's heart skipped a beat. She couldn't do that. She'd get into trouble and thrown out of Hogwarts. But she couldn't say no either or else he'd torment her for the rest of her life at the school. She thought about it for a while, she decided to say yes and seeing the shock on his face would be satisfactory.

"Yes I will then" she noted that he looked mildly surprised at first but quickly recovered himself by saying "okay then" and rejoined Sirius.

They neared towards the Slytherin common room. They could see the gargoyle. The keeper of the Slytherin common room. He was fast asleep and Lily would hate to wake him.

"Go on then" whispered Sirius. Lily crept quietly towards the portrait and raised her hand. She tapped quickly on the picture and ran away to hide round the corner where the others were.

She looked to see what had happened and saw that the gargoyle had woken up and had such a fierce face that Lily was too frightened to laugh.

"That was good"

"Wow! You actually did it!" said James turning to her and she found herself smiling, "well I said I would, didn't I?"

They decided to head back to Gryffindor tower so they turned around and collided with someone. They someone was a very tired looking Professor Dreamstone. She looked extremely angry and they all looked at their feet.

"What are you doing out of bed?" she asked sternly.

"We thought we'd take a look around" replied Sirius, flashing her a 'we didn't do anything bad' grin. It didn't work.

"You are all in detention. Don't gasp at me like that! It was your own fault! Luckily one person had enough sense to stop this and report to me what you were planning." She said. Everyone became suspicious of each other and spoke together.

"Was it you?"

"Who told?"

"It was you I bet!"

"I knew we couldn't trust you!"

"Be quiet!" Professor Dreamstone cried, "for your information it wasn't any of you that told me, it was a clever student."

"Who was it professor?" asked James.

"I don't think that concerns you Mr Potter, now, all of you go to bed!" she escorted them back to the Gryffindor tower where they were left to squabble over who had told.

Lily didn't have enough energy to join the row. She was thinking about how stupid she'd been to go along with this stupid plan. If she had said no in the first place none of this would be happening. She couldn't deal with it any more and got up from the floor where they'd been sitting and headed towards her dormitory.

Soon after Gemini and Katie followed leaving the boys to decide who it was.

"I know who it was" said Remus calmly. James and Sirius sat bolt upright and waited for him to continue. "It was Peter I bet. Who else knew about this?" his voice sounded bitter.

James thought about this and said "It all makes sense now." Sirius and Remus looked at him, confused.

"What makes sense James?" asked Sirius curiously.

"Earlier on, when we were talking about what to do, he disappeared and came back smirking at us. I knew he'd do something like this! How could we have been so stupid as to trust him? We're going to do something, he won't get away with this!"

"Yeah, but we can't do anything about it now. I think we should all go to bed and talk it over with the girls tomorrow morning." Said Remus yawning. He got up and walked up the stairs to the boys' dormitory. Sirius and James followed and as soon as their heads hit their pillows they fell asleep.

Pleez Review!!!


	17. Chapter 17

A/N: YAY! We've finished all of our year 10 exams now!!!! I hate physics and I have soooo failed it!!! I don't care how much work it takes a boy to run up some stairs!!!! It's so pointless!!!

Anyways… This story should be finished before the summer holidays, hopefully! Then we might start on the second one! We have a storyline and everything! Look out for Louisa Coeurnoir! Hehe! She's cool!

Back to this story now!

Chapter 17

Lily woke up bright and early the next morning. She was surprised to find herself feeling sad until everything came flooding back to her. She was so upset that she started to cry and woke Gemini up.

"What's wrong?" she asked, yawning loudly.

Between sobs Lily managed o blurt out everything. "I don't want to be in detention. I've never had detention before and I don't want one now. It's entirely Sirius and James' fault. If they hadn't suggested to go on a midnight adventure, then we wouldn't be in detention."

Gemini tried reassuring her and said, "Don't worry. It's probably not as bad as you think. At least you will be with me and not on your own."

Lily smiled between her sobs and thanked Gemini. She got dressed, brushed the tears away from her eyes and went down to the Gryffindor Common Room where she found James and Sirius talking quietly. She decided to sit away from everyone and opened a book to read. She couldn't concentrate on what the words were as the events from the night before flashed through her mind.

James and Sirius went over to Lily. "Hi Lily" said James softly. At the sound of James' voice she looked up and started to cry again. James and Sirius didn't know what to do. They weren't prepared for her crying, shouting maybe, but not crying. They didn't know what to do.

Finally Sirius spoke, "It's ok Lily, everything will be fine."

"You have no idea how I feel, do you?" she shouted, feeling the familiar red flush creep up her cheeks.

"Well, not really actually." Answered Sirius truthfully.

"Well I'm very upset with myself. If I hadn't gone along with that stupid plan of yours…" started Lily but she was interrupted.

"Well WE didn't force you to come!" James shouted, beginning to get annoyed with her constant whinging.

Lily just carried on crying and James and Sirius left her to go to the Great Hall for breakfast. Gemini soon came down from the girls' dormitory and went over to comfort Lily in her time of despair.

Soon Katie came down as well and went immediately over to Lily and Gemini. She saw Lily's stated and asked her what was wrong.

"It's nothing," she said, not wanting to let on.

"Well cheer up then! It can't be that bad!" she said with a bright smile on her face.

Lily, Gemini and Katie went down to the Great Hall for breakfast and were surprised to find post for them. Lily opened hers straight away, it read:

To Miss Evans

Your detention will take place today after dinner. Stay in the Great Hall once you've finished.

Yours,

Professor Dreamstone

After she'd read it she turned to Gemini and Katie, who just stared back at her. They decided to eat their breakfast and left the Great Hall afterwards.

They went back to the Gryffindor Common Room bit on their way they bumped into Kate and Robyn, who were with Lucius and Snape. As they passed, Kate stopped to talk to Gemini, "My, my, look who we have here. It's Gemstone, carrothead and big mouth!"

"Go away Kate," Gemini said and she tried to walk past them. Kate walked the same way as Gemini so Gemini tried to side-step past again. Finally, Gemini got very frustrated and got out her wand. "Wingardium Leviosa!" she said and Robyn, Kate, Lucius and Snape flew straight into the air.

Gemini, Lily and Katie walked underneath then and down the corridors to the stairs then let Kate and the others down. They climbed up the stairs ignoring the furious cries of Robyn, Kate, Lucius and Snape.

They went to the Fat Lady and said "Fermata Gorgola." They portrait swung open and they climbed in. They saw Sirius, Remus and James corning a terrified Peter.

"You little sneak!" James shrieked.

"Funny," thought Lily, "He shrieks like a girl!"

"What's going on?" asked a confused looking Katie, for once she was silent.

James turned to her and said, "It was this little sneak who told on us. He's a liar and a rubbish friend!" he shouted.

Lily had never seen James so upset before. If James knew any good spells he probably would have used them right now. Gemini was thinking the same thing. For as long as she could remember whenever James was upset he just bottled it up and was in a mood all day.

Sirius was now looking at James, unsure of what to do. "Come on James, leave him. He'll deserve what he gets." James seemed to take this to heart and walked away up to the boys' dormitory.

Everyone, except Peter, traipsed after him. When they got to James' bed, Katie was ecstatic. "WOW! We're in the boys' dormitory!" she looked around and said. "it looks just like ours" she added unenthusiastically.

She sat down on Sirius' bed and Sirius cried, "ARGH! A girl on my bed! Get off!" Katie started laughing and wouldn't budge. Sirius began pushing her and started to laugh as well. Finally, because Katie was so stubborn, he gave up and sat beside her. Gemini joined him on his bed and Lily was left standing in the middle. She decided to join Remus and James on James' bed.

James was still upset over what Peter had done and decided to change the subject. "Christmas soon, what does everyone want?"

"A BROOM!" said Sirius and Gemini together, they looked at each other and burst out laughing. James ignored them and looked to Remus.

"I want Chrysolite." He said with a gleam in his eyes. The others just looked in confusion.

"What's a Chrysolite?" Sirius asked.

"The word Chrysolite is the greek work for gold stone. Chrysolite stone is the zodiac stone for Libra-23. I need it to complete my crystal and gem collection."

"I thought you collected rocks" said Lily.

"Yeah, but I also collect twigs, crystals, lamps, magnets and everything really. I just left them all at home." Remus said, wishing that he'd brought them so that he could show the others, who were glad he hadn't.

"Well I want a broomstick too. And a book and lots and lots of chocolate!" said Katie to no one in particular. "What about you James, what do you want?"

"A broom, an invisibility cloak, Quidditch through the Ages and sweets," he replied. Sirius looked at James and told him that invisibilty cloaks were not only rare but cost millions of galleons. He concentrated on what Lily was saying.

"I just want to go home and see my mum and dad. I don't want to see my stupid sister and her stupid friend though!" she said defiantly. They chatted for a while longer until it was time for dinner down in the Great Hall.

They arrived to the loud chatter of children and the warm air. They sat down and ate hurriedly at the sight of food. They had missed lunch because they'd been having an exploding snap tournament. James won of course, he was amazing at exploding snap.

All of a sudden Sirius fell to the floor groaning and clutching his stomach.

"Sirius, are you ok mate?" James asked unsure of whether or not to laugh or get help.

"Errrrrrrr" mumbled Sirius.

"What?" asked James, leaning closer.

"I said 'not really!'" shouted Sirius. James jumped up and began to laugh. Sirius knew how to make James laugh, he do seeing as they go back years. Sirius got up from the floor and sat back on the bench. He smiled at everyone and carried on eating.

Finally everyone was full and most people were returning back to their common rooms. Everyone, that is, except the Slytherins. They went over to the Gryffindor table.

"Why aren't you leaving then?" Lucius sneered.

"Why don't you mind your own business?" Katie said.

"Don't tell me what to do! If anything, it should be me telling you!" he said.

"Well, we don't like you so go away!" Sirius said, boredly.

"Hah hah!" Lucius said sarcastically.

"You know, people who say hah hah have no sense of humour, they only say it because they can't think of a witty retort," Sirius said.

"…Oh hah hah," Lucius said and turned and left, the rest of the slytherins followed.

Professor Dreamstone watched the slytherins leave and then walked up to the Gryffindor first years.

"Now, for your detentions you will be in pairs. Katie wit Sirius, Gemini with Remus and James with Lily…" she started but before she could continue both James and Lily protested.

"But I hate him he's horrible you can't make me work with him!"

"Carrothead! I can't work with her! We'll kill each other!"

"You will work together otherwise you'll have detention for two weeks. Now, Katie and Sirius you will be helping me with some errands, Remus and Gemini you'll be helping the head boy and girl and Lily and James you will be helping Hagrid."

At the mention of Hagrid Lily and James started to protest again.

"But Professor I don't want to…"

"He scares me Professor…"

"Now James, I don't care if he scares you, you must learn to conquer your fears. Now be silent!" she silenced them with her glare. They all left to go to their separate detentions and Lily and James were left alone in the Hall, not talking to each other.

Hagrid entered the Hall and came towards them with a big black dog in tow. Lily was scared, but she didn't want any more detentions so she kept quiet. She decided that one night with Hagrid and Potter couldn't be too bad.

"Hiya you two, 'ow are ya? I'm 'agrid, as yer probably know and ternight were goin' into the forbidden fores'"

"But Hagrid we can't go into the Forbidden Forest, we're not allowed!" said James, his voice slightly higher than usual.

"Well, your wiv me an' Fang so yer can!" he said and walked towards the door to the school grounds. James and Lily had no option but to follow him, keeping well apart from each other.

When they got to the Forbidden Forest Lily and James were terrified. The trees loomed above them and the darkness and coldness didn't make things any better. Lily shivered and wished she'd brought her cloak with her. James saw this and smirked smugly, glad that he'd got his!

Hagrid stopped and started talking to a man, or was it a horse? Lily stared at the creature and listened to what it was saying.

"The moon will be bright soon. Jupiter is strong too."

"Hey Fri, have you seen anything peculiar lately?" Hagrid asked. Fri looked at Hagrid and replied, "Jupiter is strong tonight." Lily didn't know how that was an answer, neither did James. Hagrid just said, "Thanks Fri, I'll see yer soon" and walked on.

After a few minutes, James decided to ask, "Errr…Hagrid, where are we going?" Hagrid stopped and said, "We're just looking for clues."

"What sort of clues?" he persisted.

"Anything that's unusual. After what happened at Quidditch, we're all suspicious about something or someone that's trying to sabotage Hogwarts. But yer not supposed to know tha'!" he said quickly.

James began to process this into his brain and was immediately more enthusiastic about going into the forest. Lily on the other hand was terrified of what they might find. Suddenly a loud scream could be heard from the left of Hagrid and he immediately ran towards it. James and Lily tried to follow but they soon fell behind, not able to keep up with Hagrid's giant strides.

"Oh my god Potter! Where are we? I don't like it here!" Lily said desperately.

"Don't worry Evans, I'm here to protect you" he said jokily.

"Not funny" she said.

They decided to stay where they were and wait for Hagrid to find them. They sat down on a rock and noticed lots of spiders crawling into a hole. James decided to take a closer look and looked inside the hole. It was pitch black and very scary. James came away and hurried back to Lily.

Lily stared in open horror as a gigantic black spider was crawling its way out of the hole and behind James. She lifted her arm and pointed to something behind James. James didn't have to look at what she was pointing at to know it was something horrible. Just her expression said it all.

He turned around slowly and was eye to eyes with a gigantic spider. He opened his mouth to speak but nothing came out.

"Who are you?" the spider asked. James just opened his mouth and closed it again. Lily decided to speak, "I'm Lily and this is Potter, who are you?"

"I'm Aragog, what are you doing here?"

"What is this, twenty questions?" James mumbled to himself.

"We were in detention and then we heard a scream and then Hagrid left us."

"Hagrid, he sent you here?"

"Well, yes, sort of." She said, not liking the expression in the spider's many eyes.

"Very well," he clicked his pincers together and James and Lily were instantly surrounded by spiders with no escape.

"What are you doing?" she asked, her voice shaking.

"Getting my family their dinner. You don't mind do you? If Hagrid sent you here then you must be food"

"NO!" screamed Lily hysterically. James worked his mouth and screamed "HAGRID!" it was very high pitched and if Lily wasn't about to die she would probably laugh.

Just as the spiders headed in their direction they heard a thundering noise. It was Hagrid. "Stop!" he shouted, "They are friends!"

Aragog looked at Hagrid confused, "You sent them here for us, they are our dinner Hagrid."

"I didn't send them here! We got separated!" Hagrid explained. He beckoned for Lily and James to move behind him and they did so gratefully. Lily grabbed James hand and edged her way out of the circle of spiders.

"But Hagrid" Aragog whined like a spoilt child.

"I'm sorry Aragog. They aren't food, they are pupils at the school and you won't hurt them!" with that he headed towards the school. "I'm sorry Lily and James. It's all my fault, if I hadn't run off to find whatever screamed you would never have met Aragog!" he said, crying.

"It's ok Hagrid, we understand, just don't do it next time!" Lily said soothingly. They walked back to the school in silence and Hagrid escorted them back to the Great Hall. By now it was dark and Lily and James said goodnight to Hagrid whilst they went back to the Common Room. They said the password and went to sit with Sirius who was still up.

"Why are you two holding hands?" he said in disgust. Lily and James immediately let go. They had forgotten that they were still holding hands.

"Nothing, so how was your detention, I bet it wasn't as eventful as ours!" he said, changing the subject.

"Oh yeah?" Sirius said challengingly and began to tell them exactly what he had done with Katie and Professor Dreamstone. When he finished talking James decided to tell Sirius about their detention. Lily left them to it. She was tired and went up to the girls' dormitory and said goodnight to Sirius and James.

When she was out of sight, Sirius said, "So what happened between you two?"

"Nothing" he replied blushing at the thought of them holding hands.

"Well, ok, let's go to bed" and they went straight there. James' head only had to touch his pillow and he fell asleep immediately.

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	18. Chapter 18

A/N: Thank you to everyone that has reviewed. The storyline is moving on a lot faster now hehe I like it!!! On with the story!!!

Chapter 18

James and Sirius quickly got over the detention and Kate and Robyn. They didn't really care. A detention was well worth seeing the looks on people's faces when they pulled pranks on them. Especially Lily's. James said that she looked like an overripe tomato that just wanted to burst. He constantly teased her, about her hair especially. She hated it and he loved watching her get mad, it was like a hobby to him.

Sirius had a thing about pranking Slytherins. He said it was much more educational than playing tricks on Lily and their own house. In their dormitory he had 3 boxes; one labelled 'Snivellus' another marked 'Malfoy' and the last said 'general slytherin scum.' Inside were Sirius' cleverly chosen assorted jokes and tricks that he and James easily found and used whenever they were bored.

"So after we've baked the cake with the dung bomb inside we hand it to Malfoy and say 'Happy Birthday.' So when he eats it, it all explodes in his face! What do you think?" Sirius said excitedly.

"Well I do have a few suggestions…" started James. "One: neither of us can bake, two: we have no dung bombs left, three: Malfoy might get suspicious if we randomly give him presents, four: I have no idea when his birthday is and five: how can you guarantee that the bomb will go off in time?"

Sirius' face fell and he thought for a while. His face lit up again and he said "ok! So we, on flying carpets, go into Malfoy's dormitory and place a cake, which we have baked with a dung bomb inside, in there. So that when Malfoy eats it, it explodes! So, what do you think?" James rolled his eyes and looked at Remus. They both struggled not to laugh.

"Right, now class, I expect the flowers on these plants to change from white to any colour at first and then after that we will concentrate on changing them to a specific required colour. Listen closely, this WILL be on your end of year exams. The incantation is 'verandeer' repeat after me, verandeer." Professor Dreamstone said to her first year transfiguration class.

"VERANDEER!" the chorused.

"Very good. Now the wand movement is simple. You do a figure of eight going left first and then back the other way, then you say the incantation and flick. Like so:" she said showing them the 'uncomplicated' wand movement. Lily sat at the front of the class with her mouth open wide. There was no way she would be able to do it. Gemini sat next to her looking puzzled.

At the back of the class Sirius was drawing a cartoon of Malfoy walking along and then falling down a hole and James was asleep, slumped on the desk. "Yeah, verander-whats-its-face, that's the one!" he mumbled. Sirius sniggered and poked him. He opened a sleepy eye and saw that Sirius had an evil grin on his face.

"Right! When Malfoy goes to do the spell we blow the plant up and make it look like his fault." Sirius said.

"But we don't know any spells to blow things up Siri!" James said, going back to sleep.

"Ah, but Remmie here does." Sirius said, smiling.

"Ok, one: my name is Remus, not Remmie and two: what makes you think I want to use my knowledge to get someone into trouble?" Remus said from beside Katie.

"Please Remus! Pretty please! Pretty please with a cherry on top and sugar and ice cream and wonderful things!" Sirius pleaded. Remus looked uncertain. "Remus! I'll do anything! I'll do something really embarrassing! Anything! Just tell us the spell please!"

"Ok, ok, but you have to promise, anything!" Remus said, giving in slightly.

"ANYTHING!" Sirius said.

"Ok then, point your wand directly at what you want to explode and say 'fare esplodere!'"

"Thanks Remus! Fare esplodere!" Sirius whispered. All of a sudden Malfoy's plant blew up in his face. He was left with random leaves and bits of soil in his hair.

"Mr Malfoy, I don't know what you think you're playing at but it isn't funny. Detention I think will do the job. Now class get on with turning your plants different colours." Professor Dreamstone said looking up from her marking at the front of the classroom.

Lucius turned round angrily and glared at Sirius, James, Remus and Katie who were silently laughing. He mumbled something and James went back to sleep as Sirius turned the flowers different colours. He was quite close to getting them all the same colour, they were all slightly different shades of purple and although he was actually thinking of orange he was still proud.

Lucius Malfoy whispered to his friend, pointed his wand directly at Sirius' plant and said 'fuego.' He did it all very secretly so that Professor Dreamstone or any Gryffindor noticed what he was doing, just as Sirius had done when he blew up Lucius' plant. He laughed evilly and went back to trying to change the colour of the flowers on his plant.

All at once Sirius' plant set alight. "AGH!" he yelled, "Professor Dreamstone! HELP ME!" The plant blazed every shade of red under the sun. The powerful flames reached up and tickled the ceiling.

Professor Dreamstone looked up from her marking to find out what all the commotion was about. She saw the towering inferno and saw everyone to calm down. She ran over to Sirius' desk and shouted "disfuego!" a waterfall of silver fell from her wand and extinguished the fire. She sighed with relief, "Who did this?" she looked round, expecting someone to answer. Of course, no one did. "Well then, Mr Black and Mr Potter, you will both join Mr Malfoy in detention. Class dissmissed, clear up this mess you two!"

Their detention was scheduled for a the following Monday. James was annoyed about all of this, but didn't say anything. One, it wasn't his fault about any of this! He had just been sleeping the whole time! and two, it wasn't even really Sirius fault, well, maybe it was. James figured that this detention made up for all the other times he'd pranked Lily and not got caught.

Sirius and James arrived at the detention before Lucius. Professor Dreamstone explained their task. To remove all of the Drooble's Best Blowing Gum remains from the bottom of the desks, without the aid of any magic. She then left because she had some important business to attend to with Professor Dumbledore. She told them to explain everything to Malfoy when he finally arrived.

James thought about this 'important business' it had to be urgent, no teacher would leave Sirius and James alone in a room and expect them to do any work. Unless they were insane of course.

"I don't think Malfoy's going to show," said James eventually.

"Neither do I" said Sirius.

"So, what do you think this important business is then?" James asked, to hear Sirius side on the story. He already knew what Sirius was going to do though.

"OOO ALBUS!" he screeched in a high, falsetto voice, "Come and work your magic on me!" and the two boys burst out laughing, with awful pictures imprinted in their minds.

There was twenty minutes left and James suddenly thought of something. "Sirius, I have something to tell you, you might not agree with it, but listen anyway." Sirius looked horrified and pushed his chair away, "I'm sorry James, but I don't think of you in that way. It's probably best that i stay over here for now."

"What?" asked James, thoroughly confused, "EWWW! NO SIRIUS! NOT LIKE THAT! You know we were talking a while back of what we should do to get noticed, well I've had an idea!" Sirius leaned in, it sounded good. "We should make a pact, to set a new record before we leave school, to get the most detentions that anyone has ever seen!"

"We'd be so popular!"

"And respected!"

"We'd get all the ladies!"

"We'd be the Kings of Cool!"

"The Princes of Pranking!"

"The Lords of the Rings!" They both laughed.

"Let's do it!" Sirius said.

There was only five minutes left so James and Sirius decided to leave, it was unlikely that anyone would miss them if they left. They collected their things and went through the door. As they did a flashing light and sirens went off and the voice of Professor Dreamstone appeared from nowhere.

"WHERE DO YOU THINK YOU'RE GOING? YOU KNOW YOU'RE NOT ALLOWED TO LEAVE DETENTIONS EARLY! THAT WILL BE ANOTHER DETENTION! YOU WILL BE NOTIFIED OF THE DETAILS SHORTLY BY OWL!"

James and Sirius grinned at each other and high-fived.

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	19. Chapter 19

A/N: I'm onto Elaine's chappies now! Watch me go!!!!!!!!!

Chapter 19

In the Great Hall, the following day James, Sirius and Remus were all playing exploding snap together at the Gryffindor table. Earlier that morning they had exchanged gifts with each other. They had all vowed not to open them until Christmas day and James had even told them an tiny white lie that he had put a jinx on the presents so that they couldn't open them even if they tried.

Lily was so happy. It would be the first time since she'd been at Hogwarts that she'd get to go home and see her family. Everyone was coming over at Christmas and Lily couldn't wait.

Hagrid came in looking very white and said "Train's here, everyone going 'ome fer Christmas better leave now!" Lily was one of the first to leave and get into a carriage. Gemini and Katie quickly joined her.

"It's gonna be so cool seeing my family again, I can't wait! I wish we could just hurry up and get there!" Lily said.

"Woah! Hold your horses Lils! We'll get there soon enough!" Katie joked. Lily then burst into tears, unable to contain her excitement anymore. Gemini and Katie looked at each other, not knowing what to do they finally decided on hugging Lily which could be seen as friendly or comforting.

"So, Katie," said Lily wiping off her tears, "What are you doing for the holidays?"

"The usual, nothing special. It's going to be strange without Simon though, he was always the funny guy who mum and dad adored. I used to be really jealous but he's gone now," she went silent and stared out of the window, obviously not wanting to talk any more.

Gemini decided to break the silence, "Well me, Sirius and James are all going to the Potter's house. We'll see Aries again, he was so miserable after we left him, it nearly broke my heart!"

"Who's Aries?" asked Katie.

"My little brother, haven't I told you about him?" she said, surprised, "I'm sure I have but anyway, he's five and three quarters and looks a lot like Sirius. He's really sweet now, but with Sirius in the family he's bound to turn out cocky."

"Sirius isn't bad, he's just…" Katie started, searching for the right word to describe him.

"Yeah," replied Lily, "He's not as bad as my sister's friend Vernon Dursley though. He's so ugly and annoying. He thinks I should adore him like my stupid sister does but I hate him! I don't know why on earth Petunia likes him, he's so infuriating," Lily said. Gemini and Katie laughed.

Soon they were all on the train and they managed to get a compartment to themselves. They played exploding snap and wizard's chess throughout the journey back to Kings Cross.

As they entered though the barrier and Lily broke into a big smile as she saw her mum and dad. She rushed over to them and hugged them both. Gemini and Katie went over to them and Lily introduced her friends to her parents. When she asked where Petunia was she found out that her sister was in the car, sulking. She said her goodbyes to her two friends and went off happily with her parents.

The ride home in the car was spent relating the year's events to her mother and father. She told them all about Hogwarts, including the detention but she failed to mention the countless times she had been told off for arguing with James Potter. Petunia was trying hard not to listen and to blatantly ignore her sister but failed when her curiosity got the better of her.

"So, Lily, is it better than normal school?" Petunia asked, genuinely interested.

"Yes it is and I've made loads of great friends! There's Gemini, Katie, Remus, Becca Hall, Anna Haigh, Sarah Chadwick oh the list is endless!" she laughed but started to miss her friends, the holiday was going to be quiet without their endless banter.

When they reached number four Privet Drive Lily noticed her grandmother's shiny, red mini cooper parked outside. Lily's face lit up and asked her mother if her grandma was her, she found out that she was staying until boxing day along with her Auntie Hilda and Uncle Nobby.

When the car stopped Lily got out as quickly as she could, leaving her dad to struggle with her bags, and rushed inside her house. She went into the sitting room and found her relatives sat around the roaring fire having a cup of tea. She rushed over to her grandma and gave her a big hug. Petunia pushed past them in a huff, greeting her auntie and uncle and then stormed off to her bedroom.

Meanwhile Lily began explaining to her grandma what she had done at school and everything she had learned, but wasn't allowed to show her anything because of the Decree for the Reasonable Restriction of Underage Sorcery, 1875, Paragraph C and also section 13 of the International Confederation of Warlocks' Statue of Secrecy. These together basically said that people under 17 couldn't perform magic out of school and in front of muggles.

That evening they ate dinner and talked some more before going to bed.

"LILY! LILY! IT'S CHRISTMAS! WAKE UP WAKE UP! PRESENTS!" Petunia screamed to her sister early on Christmas morning. She bounced around the room and opened her curtains. To her extreme delight she saw, "SNOW! SNOW LILS SNOW! IT'S A WHITE CHRISTMAS! SNOW SNOW SNOW!"

Lily got up immediately and raced to the window, she broke out into a grin when she saw that her back garden was covered in a snug blanket of snow. Lily pulled on some clothes as fast as possible and her and Petunia raced outside to play in the snow. Even though they were 12 and 14 in age they still threw snowballs at each other and built a snowman.

After about an hour they came back inside rosy cheeks and gasping for breath, huge grins plastered on their faces. They changed into warm clothes and put on children's television. Outside snow had begun to fall again form the heavens and it coated the slush that lay in the back garden.

At around nine o'clock their relatives roused and got up. Whilst they were singing the Balamory theme tune their mother made them breakfast and they ate it, glued to the television set.

Petunia and Lily kept hinting towards the pile of presents under the sparkling Christmas tree, their fingers itching to tear off the wrapping paper. Finally their mum let them open the presents and they began straight away. Their mum, dad, grandma, aunt and uncle were all looking very tired with their cups of tea on the sofas and chairs with Lily and Petunia on the floor ripping off the paper on the presents.

"WOW! THANKS LIL!" Petunia yelled as she opened her present, a set of videos including such classics as Dirty Dancing, Sleepless in Seattle and Edward Scissorhands.

Lily opened her presents and was delighted to find lots of great things. She got a book on charms from Katie, an endless supply of sweets from Gemini and Sirius and a piece of rock from Remus. Sarah and Anna had put their money together and got Lily a camera which took wizard photos. Lily hoped that her friends enjoyed their presents as much as she was enjoying hers.

She opened a packet of Bertie Bott's and popped one in her mouth as she opened the presents from her parents. Petunia, spying the open box of sweets, reached in and grabbed a red jellybean, expecting it to be strawberry or possibly raspberry. She put it in her mouth and began to chew and was overcome by the strong taste of chilli. She raced into the kitchen and downed a glass of water.

"I'm fine!" she yelled from the kitchen, Lily laughed trust her sister to have a bad experience with Bertie Bott's beans!

Lily opened the rest of her presents to find that she'd got a selection of clothes from her parents along with plenty of other bits and bobs. But by far the most intriguing present she got was from her grandmother. It was delicately wrapped in silver tissue paper; she opened it and found a small pink box. She carefully lifted off the lid and saw something glittery. She lifted it out; there were two things, a charm bracelet and a necklace. The necklace had a tear drop shaped diamond pendant on a silver chain. The charm bracelet was silver and had tiny tear drop diamonds hanging off it. Lily smiled in awe and put them on before hugging her grandmother and thanking her profoundly.

Later that day Lily and Petunia were surrounded by their family retelling old jokes from the crackers and wearing the silly hats on their heads. They had just finished their magnificent Christmas dinner made by their mum, grandma and auntie. Their cousins had come round to join them in the festivities.

The dining table, which had just an hour ago been piled high with food, glistening from being piping hot. The centre of the table was laden with the turkey, plump and juicy and full of stuffing. There were bowls of assorted vegetables, ranging from bright orange carrots to green broccoli and white cauliflower. A bowl with fluffy white mashed potato was next to the gravy dish, which was steaming.

Now the bowls were clean, scraped empty of every trace of food and the family was enjoying a game of charades in the living room.

"Three words, it's a film, third word…ILL!… NOT WELL! …HOT! …FEVER! IT'S FEVER!"

Lily's cousin Jamie was having a hard time miming Saturday Night Fever. He was trying to do Saturday by pointing around him but they only managed to get 'Christmas' or 'house.' He ran out of the room and fetched a calendar and pointed to the word Saturday.

"AH! SATURDAY NIGHT FEVER!" screamed Petunia and went to stand in front of everyone to mime Cats.

It was well into the night when everyone finally went home and Lily went to bed feeling very happy.

James' Christmas was just as exciting. As usual Sirius, Gemini and Aries had joined them for Christmas and Shirley had made a huge fuss out of them, especially Aries.

James had woken up to the happy cries of Aries and was about to go back to sleep but was attacked by Sirius jumping on his bed. He rubbed his eyes and groaned as he saw what time it was. Even though he liked Christmas, he liked sleeping even more, especially at four in the morning. James scowled and got up, once Sirius started there was no stopping him.

When he went downstairs he saw Aries eating his breakfast and Gemini was sat at the table sipping a glass of orange juice to try and wake herself up. Sirius was also in the room, busily tearing up the wrapping paper on his presents.

James decided to join him and shook off the sleepy shroud that just a few minutes before covered him. He began tearing off the wrapping paper too. He said thanks to Gemini, Aries and Sirius for the toy broomstick that they had got him as it hummed quietly round the room.

He opened the pile of presents from his parents and his eyes widened at all of the amazing things that he saw. He'd got a pile of books, a new gobstones set, a luxury set of snap cards, plenty of sweets, a set of Puddlemere United robes and lots of other things.

"Wow Aries," he said, as he saw what Aries was playing with, "Who got you that?"

"Your mummy and daddy," Aries replied and carried on playing with his plastic figurines of the Puddlemere United squad.

"Can I play with them with you?" asked James.

"No!" yelled Aries immediately screwing up his face in pretend tears. James left him to it.

Later that day, noise and chaos surrounded James. Everyone was talking happily and Aries was playing with James' youngest cousin Tom. Soon they began to cry as Tom had taken Aries' figurines to play with and wouldn't give it back. Their parents began immediately to try and separate them to cease the racket they were producing.

"Why won't they shut up?" moaned Sirius.

"Because they're babies," replied Gemini.

"AM NOT!" screamed Tom, hearing what Gemini said.

"Yes you are," Gemini laughed back.

"AM NOT! AM NOT! AM NOT!" yelled Tom.

"Prove it," said James, exactly like the time when he'd challenged Lily to knock on the door of the Slytherin Common Room.

"How?" asked Tom, being young and naïve he was desperate to prove himself.

"By not crying and not taking Aries' toys," Tom cocked his head and thought for a moment. He nodded and shut up pretty soon.

The rest of the evening was pleasant. They ate a magnificent meal that filled everyone up to the brim. After they'd finished the adults stayed inside talking whilst the children went outside to play Quidditch. Aries and Tom were left on the ground as they had no brooms to play on and the others said that they were too young.

By the time they went back inside the adults were all about to leave. They said their goodbyes to everyone and went home. James went upstairs, to his bed and fell straight asleep.

The next day Lily was told not to make too much noise, as her grandma wasn't feeling too well. Lily thought that it must have been all of the delicious food as she tiptoed past the door of the spare room.

In the kitchen she found Petunia looking in the distance. She crept up behind her and shouted, "BOO!" Petunia jumped and smashed the plate that she was holding.

"Why did you do that?" she screamed.

"I'm sorry, it was just a joke," Lily said apologetically.

"Ok, leave me alone then," Petunia said, staring into the distance again.

"What are you looking at?" Lily asked, following her sister's line of vision.

"Nothing," Petunia said, hastily looking back at the washing up again. As Lily was shorter than Petunia she couldn't see what her sister had been looking at and decided to go into the living room.

She glanced out of the window and saw that it had snowed some more over night. She decided to go outside and play in the snow and went to see if her sister wanted to join her. Of course Petunia said she wanted to and they went outside and built an army of snowmen. They were so busy having fun that they didn't hear their mother calling them desperately. When they finally heard her they raced inside to find their mum stood leaning against the doorframe with tears streaming down her face.

"What's wrong mum?" asked Petunia.

"It's your grandma, she's not feeling well, your dad's just taken her to hospital I'm going to visit her now. You can come if you want to, I think she'd like it if you did," Rose Evans said.

That night Lily spent ages trying to get to sleep. She was restless and tossed and turned for most of the night. There was no use even trying to get to sleep, as she couldn't. She kept thinking about all of the great times she'd had with her grandma over the many years. When she heard the phone ring she got up and went downstairs.

Petunia was already downstairs, sat on the sofa with her mum. Lily went and joined them and sat on the other side of her mum. Her dad was on the phone, sat on the chair and he was very pale indeed. His hand shook as he replaced the receiver back on the phone.

"Is she…is she?" Rose asked her husband, tears already forming in her eyes. Robert Evans nodded in reply and sat next to Lily and hugged his daughter. The Evans family just sat like that, silently crying for well over an hour.

Ruth Evans' funeral was arranged for the following Tuesday.

Meanwhile James and Sirius were sleeping in but Gemini and Aries had been up for ages, making snow angels outside. Aries wasn't very good at it however, as he couldn't get back up without spoiling the shape.

Gemini had promised Lily that she would telephone her during the holidays, well, attempt to telephone her. The Potter's had always had a telephone, just for effect, but it had never been used. Gemini stood up and brushed the snow off her coat.

"Hey! Where are you going?" Aries pouted, "Don't leave me!" Gemini explained what she was doing and left to go inside. Aries pulled out his Puddlemere United squad and started playing with them.

Gemini picked up the strange device and looked it over. She had no idea how to use it and asked Edward Potter for some advice.

"Err…Mister Potter?"

"How many times do I have to tell you Gem, call me Edward," he laughed.

"Um…I was wondering, how do you use the telephone?" Gem asked.

"Err…well…I'm not to sure really, it's just an ornament really," he said.

"I need to phone Lily, do you have any instructions?" He nodded and went off. He came back with a sheet of A4 paper. She read it and pretty soon she was talking to Petunia and then Lily.

"How are you? Did you have a good Christmas? What did you get?" asked Gemini in one breath.

"I got loads of things, thanks for my prezzie. Did you have a good time?" Lily answered and asked at the same time.

"Yeah! It was so much fun! Thanks for my present too! I loved it! So, what are you doing?" Gem asked.

"Nothing much," said Lily gloomily and began to cry.

"What's the matter Lils?" Gemini asked, worried for her friend.

"My grandma died last week and I still haven't really acknowledged it yet," Lily sobbed.

"Oh Lily, I'm so sorry, are you ok? Stupid question, of course you're not," Gemini fumbled.

"I'll be fine, I'm really sorry but I've got to go now, see you on the train, bye!" Lily said.

"Yeah, and sorry again. See you on the train! BYE!" Gemini said whilst she hung up the phone and sat down. 'Poor Lily,' Gemini thought, 'her grandma dies right near Christmas, life is so unfair!'

The next couple of days passed by in a blur for Lily and soon it was time for school again. She couldn't wait to she her friends again but really wasn't in the mood for either James or Sirius.


	20. Chapter 20

A/N: Thank you again to people who have reviewed especially Kate and Mal who have reviewed every chapter so far. Thank you.

Chapter 20

Things settled back down to the slow, laborious routine again after the Christmas holidays. The first years were given surprise tests to see how much they'd remembered from last term, but it wasn't really a surprise after their second or third lesson of it. It was just a horrifying prospect. Especially for Lily, who remembered it all but was so unsure of herself that she sometimes put the right answer, scribbled it out and wrote a wrong answer.

The staff of Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry were unsettled and the pupils could feel it. There was something in the air that wasn't right. There was impure or 'dark' magic looming around them. Many suspected it was left over from the disastrous Quidditch event from the previous term but some thought that they were about to experience something else.

James and Sirius sat staring out of the window in their fascinating Herbology lesson. They were meant to be making posters describing the uses of plants in medicine but really couldn't be bothered, they were waiting for the weekend. Remus on the other hand had made his poster and was now putting the finishing touches to it. He was making the colours and text move and change colour with the aid of a simple spell.

Lily was sat at the front of the class. Surprisingly enough she wasn't making posters either, but for a different reason to James and Sirius.

"Miss Evans why aren't you making your poster? I thought you were a hardworking girl!" Professor Sprout said in amazement.

"Um…Professor, would it be ok if I wrote it in essay form rather than in a poster?" Lily asked, timidly.

"Why is that Miss Evans?" Professor Sprout asked curiously.

"Because I think that poster making is immature and childish!" Lily said. The whole class snorted with laughter and was only silenced when Professor Sprout threatened them all with detention.

"Well, I suppose you can," said Professor Sprout on the outside but on the inside she was thinking 'My, what a strange girl! Bright but strange, I have a feeling she'll go far in life!'

That evening, when Sirius, James, Remus and Katie were sat in the Common Room playing chess, Remus suddenly told them that he had to go home, because his auntie was ill.

"Your auntie? I thought she was ill at around this time last month!" Sirius exclaimed.

"No, that was his grandma!" said Katie, who was trying to concentrate on her next move but wasn't really all that good at chess.

"Katie! You can't move there! You'll put yourself in check mate!" Remus said, staring at the board.

"Remus! You weren't meant to tell her that!" James said, annoyed that he wouldn't win instantly.

"So, really Remus, why are you leaving?" Sirius asked, "You're not really going home are you?"

"I don't know what you mean," Remus said, looking at the floor.

"I mean, it's not really your auntie is it, it's actually the moon isn't it?" Sirius continued.

"I don't know what you're talking about! Of course it's my auntie! And of course I'm going home! Where else would I be going?" Remus said uneasily.

"Fine, go and see your 'auntie' then," Sirius said loosing patience with the boy, he didn't understand why he didn't just tell them all. They were his friends weren't they! And friends don't keep secrets!

Remus left the Common Room without another word. He didn't like people asking questions for fear that they would find out his secret. But Sirius sounded awfully convincing, but he couldn't know, could he? He'd been so careful!

The werewolf went as usual to Professor Dreamstone's office so that she could take him to the Shrieking Shack safely. After his previous incident the staff didn't feel as safe around him as they had done before. All the staff except Dumbledore that is, he said that he'd trust Remus until his dying day, which was a long way off yet!

Professor Dreamstone escorted the young boy outside and to the Whomping Willow. A black-haired boy looked out of the window in his first year dormitory. He saw the dark-haired woman lead the sandy-haired boy into the tree. She pressed the knot and he climbed in out of sight. She then peered into the darkness to make sure that no one was watching and then satisfied, she left.

Sirius' thoughts had been correct. There was something up with Remus and to him at least it was very obvious. He didn't want to tell anyone, just on the off chance that he was wrong. But he knew it. Remus was a werewolf!

James had just beaten Katie at wizard's chess. Again. There was really no use in playing her as she lacked any sense of logic or strategy. James switched the game to exploding snap, at least now there was some excitement when she lost. Chess was so boring when the same person won with the same moves over and over again.

Sirius left the bedroom and went back down to his friends. But then something strange happened. He was glued to the spot. He couldn't move. He couldn't speak, blink, or anything. His muscles were frozen and he definitely wasn't going anywhere. Neither was anyone else at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry.

The whole school was frozen solid. Like the lake at the moment. Eyes were glassy, hair was stiff and mouths weren't moving. The school looked like a scene from Madam Tussaurd's. Waxworks littered the silent school. The moon shone through the windows and cast eerie shadows on the pupils.

"I'm coming for you Albus," said a voice. A piercing voice that shattered the silence of the air. It reached into every nook and cranny and smothered it in darkness. It washed around the walls and coated it in evilness.

"Albus Percival Wulfric Brian Dumbledore, you won't live to see another day. Your time is up. It will happen tonight. Everything will end tonight. Evil will out all." The voice said. It was hard to tell whether it was male or female because of the way it was entwined with impure magic.

A sandy-haired boy emerged as the moon moved to create place for the sun. He crept out of the secret tunnel and looked around for any other sign of life. He saw a figure. A woman, with tight, curly black hair and red, silky dress. She danced her way through the long grass of the school grounds and up to the main entrance. She giggled like a schoolgirl and waltzed up the steps.

The boy wondered what to do. He realised that the school must be in danger from the way she was talking. Talking about Dumbledore. He looked at the distance from him to her.

'If I aim from here I can probably stun her. Or immobilise her or something,' he thought. He couldn't let anything else happen. He had to do something and something soon. She was pulling open the huge, wooden doors.

"Stupe….Stupe" he tried but he was too cold. He tried warming himself up by rubbing his hands together. "Stupefy!"

The flashes of light span from his wand and hit the woman straight in the back. She jerked and fell to the floor in a heap. The boy left his hiding place and ran up to the castle, tripping from the sheer speed at which he was getting up there.

He ran up to the school and saw the woman sprawled out on the steps. He looked at her. She could have been pretty, if she hadn't been corrupted by evil. Her eyes were wide open in shock and were icy blue. The colour of the lake just before Christmas. Her lips were full and coated in cherry coloured lipstick. He ignored her and opened the double doors.

He was shocked by what he saw. Everything was still and inanimate. It was like walking into a muggle photograph and not being part of it. He walked up to Lucius Malfoy who was walking through the entrance hall. Ah the pranks he could play on him at that moment. But he didn't.

There was nothing that he could do to help. So he ran up to the owlery and composed a letter to the Ministry of Magic.

Dear Ministry,

My name is Remus Lupin and I'm a pupil at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. Something dreadful is happening here. Please send someone to help me. I'm all alone. Please come quick.

Yours truly, Remus Lupin

It was good enough for the short time he'd had to write it in. He looked around for an owl, only to find that they were all still and glassy eyed as well. He didn't know what to do and fell to the ground in floods of tears.

Just then he head a loud screech. He looked outside and saw a large, brown owl heading his way. It must be returning from an errand. He strapped the letter to its leg and sent it on its way. Then he collapsed again and waited for a reply.

An owl flew into the Ministry at breakneck speed. It landed on the reception desk in a parcel of feathers. The receptionist looked down at it in shock and opened the letter that was attached to it. It must be important to have the owl that stressed.

She read the letter and her eyes widened. "MINISTER! MINISTER!" she screamed as she ran up to his office. He met her on the way, after hearing her urgent cries.

"What is it Melissa?" he asked the frantic woman. She shoved the letter in his direction as she gasped for breath. He read it and ran past her shouting orders in every which direction. He disapparated and found himself outside the Hogwart's gates. He levitated himself up to the owlery, missing everything that was within.

"Minister?"

"Remus Lupin I presume?" the boy nodded. "I don't understand exactly what happened but show me something, anything that's gone wrong." Remus led the man out of the room and into the corridor. It was immediately clear what was the problem was.

"Ah, I see. Remobilus!" he said and everyone was walking again as if nothing had happened.

"Also, Minister, Sir, there was a woman. I stunned her as I came in. She's outside, on the steps" Remus explained to the man. They raced there as quickly as possible, gaining plenty of weird looks.

They got there but were too late. She no longer lay there. She had gone.

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	21. Chapter 21

A/N: thank you to everyone!!! And half-blood prince? Excuse me?

Disclaimer: Do I look like JK Rowling?

Chapter 22

James and Sirius were obsessed. With Quidditch. They had everything to do with Quidditch. Brooms, books, stickers, autographs and everything you could possibly have! They weren't the only ones either. Gemini, Katie and Anna were Quidditch mad as well.

Lily hated Quidditch. She didn't see the point in it at all. It was a load of stupid people who obviously had a death wish, flying around on sticks. She didn't see what all the fuss was about. Football was bad enough and that wasn't even that dangerous. Why did everyone get so excited about Quidditch? It was just like every other sport! Stupid and pointless.

Another thing Lily hated, well not really hated, but strongly disliked was Katie. She was so irritating. She followed her and Gemini round constantly nowadays. She couldn't understand. What was so interesting about her and Gemini she couldn't see. No offence to Gemini or anything.

It wasn't the fact that she was horrible or anything. The total opposite, she was really nice. It was the constant talking. She didn't stop. She talked and talked and talked all the time. Every single minute of every single day. It was so irritating.

Katie started off as friends with James and Sirius but had grown apart from them lately. She said it was because she wanted some friends that were girls and that this was her way of doing it. By talking them to death.

"Have you ever watched the muggle show Big Brother?" Lily asked Gemini. Gemini hadn't so Lily went on. "Well it's this television programme where twelve people are put into a house together and aren't allowed to leave."

"That doesn't sound very nice!" Gemini said, startled at the idea of a human zoo.

"They go on it out of their own choice. Well, anyway, I feel like we're in it sometimes. Like we can't get away from her!" Lily said, exasperatedly.

"Get away from who?" Gemini asked, confused.

"Katie, she's been following us," Lily said.

"Has she?" Gemini asked.

"Yes, haven't you noticed?" Gemini shook her head, "Well it's really irritating me! She won't leave us alone, she's always there and she's ALWAYS talking!"

"Woah! Calm down Lils!" Gemini said, "She's really not that bad. Once you get to know her that is."

"But how can you get to know her? That's what I don't understand. She talks constantly!" Lily moaned.

"Honestly Lils, have you never sat down and talked to her instead of just listening? Have you ever tried to get to know her?" Gemini said.

"But Gemini! She's so irritating! And annoying, and horrible, and small, and really, really sickening to watch, and…" but what else Katie was in Lily's eyes Gemini never knew because there was a small sob at the door and a flash of brown hair rushed out of the doorframe.

"Great Lils, now you've done it. Well she won't be stalking you anymore will she," Gemini said sarcastically.

"I never said she was stalking me!" Lily said.

"Whatever," and Gemini left the room in search of Katie.

Lily flopped down on her bed, stunned. How could her best friend just leave like that? It wasn't like she didn't have a proper argument or anything. Her argument was sensible, true and fair. Katie was annoying and she was following her and Gemini around all the time. Now she doubted that either Katie or Gemini would talk to her again. Life was unfair.

Gemini rushed down the stairs and followed the other girl out of the Common Room.

"Katie! Katie!" she shouted, but the girl didn't stop. "Please let me talk to you!" The dark-haired girl rushed through the crowd of people in the corridor and down the stone steps into the library. Gemini tried to stop her but was stopped from going into the room by a lunch time supervisor who said that the library was full.

Remus Lupin sat in the library copying out spells into his notebook. He was helping the librarian put back the books that people had rented and he thought he might as well learn something new as he did it. First years normally weren't allowed to work in the library but because of Lupin's keenness he was hired straight away.

"Excuse me, excuse me! You're not allowed to chew in the library! No food in here! It's one of the rules!" he said to a group of fourth years, they just laughed at him and blew even bigger bubbles. "Mr Snoop! Mr Snoop sir! They're not obeying the rules!" he squeaked. The fourth years glared at him whilst they took out their gum and held it in their hands. One of them leaned against a bookshelf and stuck theirs on one of the books.

"What's this Mr Lupin? They're what?" Dreyfus Snoop the librarian said icily as he hobbled over to Lupin and the fourth years.

"They were chewing sir" Lupin said. Standing up straight and smoothing out the creases in his robes.

"Really boys? Chewing? Chewing in MY library?" he said, in his slippery voice. They all gulped and moved their hands around, the chewing gum was obviously becoming hard. "And what's this?" he said, lifting out one of the books from a nearby shelf, the one the boy had stuck his gum to. "OH MY!" he shouted and dropped the book. "Detention all of you! You will sort out that pile of books" he said, pointing at a mountain by his desk, "into alphabetical order! Tomorrow lunchtime. I shall see you then!"

"But sir!" Lupin said, after the boys had gone, "that was my job!"

"Quiet Lupin!"

"Remus!" someone sobbed from behind him. He turned around and saw Katie with tears running down her face.

"Katie! What's wrong?" he asked. But he couldn't understand a word she was saying, she was crying too hard and mumbling all he words. "Come on," he said and took her away from the library and into the school grounds. He sat her down on a bench near to the greenhouses and tried to get her to talk again.

"It'snotfairwhydoesshehatemesomuchwhathaveieverdonetoher?" she rambled out then started breathing heavily. She breathed faster and faster and tears were still streaming down her face. Lupin didn't know what to do. She was having a panic attack and Remus had never seen any one do this before. He had no idea what to do. He'd heard Sirius say that you just slapped them but he doubted that that would work.

"Calm down Katie, things can't be as bad as they seem. Even if whomever you're talking about does hate you, which I'm sure they don't, you still have loads of good friends. Like me, James and Sirius and Anna and everyone likes you! You can tell me all about it and I'll sit here and listen if you just calm down."

Slowly Katie's breathing returned to normal and she dried her eyes with the sleeve of her robe. She looked at Remus; he obviously meant what he'd said so she decided to tell him everything about what had happened in the dormitory.

"Well who cares what she thinks! She's so full of herself anyway! And at least Gemini likes you, and I do and James and Sirius do! You've got loads of friends, so don't worry about what she thinks! Ignore her and show her how you don't need her!" Remus said.

"Thanks Remus, you're a great friend!" Katie said and hugged him. They sat and talked about the Quidditch match next week; Hufflepuff versus Gryffindor when they heard raised voices coming their way.

"I DON'T CARE WHAT YOU WERE DOING WITH HER! YOU WERE STILL WITH HER!"

"WE'RE ONLY FRIENDS! THAT'S IT! SHE WAS HELPING ME WITH MY HOMEWORK!"

"I'M SURE SHE WAS, AND WHAT ELSE WAS SHE HELPING YOU WITH?"

"THAT'S IT! SHE'S ONE OF MY SISTER'S FRIENDS!"

"WELL, I DID WONDER WHAT A THIRD YEAR WOULD WANT WITH YOU! YOU'RE SCUM!"

"SAR-AH!"

"DON'T YOU SAR-AH ME! YOU'RE DUMPED ANDREW WOOD! I DON'T WANT YOU TO EVER TALK TO ME AGAIN!"

Remus and Katie watched as Sarah Chadwick stormed away looking very cross indeed. Andrew Wood dragged himself along behind looking very upset. He was telling the truth but Sarah wouldn't listen to him. He saw Remus and Katie and went to sit with them.

"You hear that?" he asked them.

"Yeah"

"Sorry mate"

"Ah, it's ok, I was getting sick of holding her hand anyway!" he sighed. All three of them sat there staring out across the school grounds. Watching the sun laugh and dance merrily over the lake, which was slowly thawing out.

"Women!" the three of them sighed and laughed.

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	22. Chapter 22

A/N: I'm doing Sport relief dressed as a Ravenclaw student! How cool am I! Thanks again to everyone who reviewed!

Chapter 23

The next big Quidditch match was looming ahead. Gryffindor versus Hufflepuff. Everyone was excited. Elaine Tang had been organising a huge post-match party for the Gryffindors in the Common Room. She and her friends had organised music, drink and food for the whole house. They were very optimistic about Gryffindor winning.

Hufflepuff prefects had been doing the same. All of their party equipment was set up but they had decided to have pre-match party, just in case.

Because of the fact that Hogwarts no longer had a Quidditch pitch or stadium they were going to use the Quidditch pitch just outside of Hogsmeade. The whole school, well, everyone who wanted to go, was travelling there by coach. The crazy, 'horse-less' carriages that were used to get people to and from Hogsmeade station.

Lily didn't want to go. She really didn't want to go. And when her mind was set about something, it stayed. She was too stubborn to change it. Gemini kept pleading with Lily to go but when she'd said she wouldn't about a million times Gemini gave up and went to find Katie.

"Um, Katie, can I talk to you for a moment?" she asked, pulling Katie away from a riveting game of 'soak the Slytherins' which involved Katie, James and Sirius and a large bag of water bombs.

"Yeah, sure, what is it Gemini?" she asked, laughing as Sirius got Lucius again. How Lucius didn't realise where the bombs were coming from she'd never know.

"Well, you know the Quidditch match tomorrow, can I sit with you?" Gemini asked, feeling slightly embarrassed for some reason.

"What about Evans?" asked Katie, stunned.

"She doesn't want to go, says that Quidditch is a stupid game!" Gemini laughed.

"Well of course you can sit with me!" Katie said with a huge grin. Gemini was relieved and joined in the game of soak the Slytherins, which was actually quite fun!

The following day Katie and Gemini got up and went down to breakfast together. They sat with James, Sirius and Remus. They laughed, joked and talked about the upcoming match.

Lily woke up and was amazed that Gemini, her best friend, had left without her. She wondered where she and, she looked around the room, only one other bed was empty, Katie had gone. She got dressed and went down to breakfast.

She saw Gemini sat with the others and was disgusted. She looked around for people that she knew and saw that the only other person was Peter.

"Hi Peter, can I sit here?" she asked. He looked around, there was only him there.

"Are…are you talking to me?" he stuttered. She nodded and took that as a 'yes Lily of course you can sit with me!' She sat down next to him and began eating.

James glanced across the table and saw them. He spat out the toast he was eating in shock.

"Nice table manners James!" said Sirius sarcastically. "What are you looking at that made you go 'EGH' anyways?" Sirius put his head next to James' and looked in the same direction. "EGH!" Sirius said.

Katie, Gemini and Remus looked in turn and were also horrified.

"What is she doing?" asked Gemini, almost to herself rather than anyone else.

"She's fraternising with the enemy!" said James angrily.

"Stupid mudblood!" said Sirius.

"SIRIUS!" said the rest of them. Lily was bad, but she wasn't that bad. Sirius simply shrugged and went on looking evilly in their direction.

When the time came to get on the carriages Elaine took their names and coach number. Sirius, James, Remus, Gemini, Katie and Andrew Wood were together in coach number seventeen. They talked all the way to the Hogsmeade stadium, which was about twenty miles away.

When they got there they were shocked to see the number of Ministry workers guarding it. They were obviously making sure that what happened at Hogwarts didn't happen here. They were only letting students and teachers in, in the hope that no one else could get in and sabotage the pitch. It hadn't really crossed anyone's minds however that the person who wrecked the Hogwarts pitch might already be inside the school, but nevertheless they were prepared for the worst.

"As you know we've had to use this stadium temporarily but I'm sure the play will be just as good." Commentated Rachel Flansborough from her temporary commentator's box.

"Come on Gem! Stop moping about and come and sit down!" said Sirius to his sister. She looked awkward and uneasy like she didn't want to be there.

"What's wrong?" asked James.

"It's just, I feel really bad, about Lily, like I should have stayed or something," she said, finally sitting down.

"Evans is no good Gem," said Sirius.

"She's not though Siri, she's really nice, once you get to know her of course," Gemini said, standing up for her absent friend.

"Whatever, I don't like her, none of us here do, you know what she did to Katie. She's evil!" said Sirius, settling down in his seat. Something wasn't right. He couldn't sit still. He stood up and there was a loud ripping noise. He looked at the seat, there was a nail sticking up slightly from the wooden bench, it hadn't been hammered in right.

"Siri, I would sit back down if I were you," said James, "We'll figure a way to sort out the rip in your trousers later!" Sirius went red and sat back down straight away.

"And the players line up on the pitch. Christina Epsom is favourite to catch the snitch on this fine day! Madame Spinner-Webb releases the balls and they're off! It's Michael Knightly with the Quaffle for Gryffindor!"

The players soared high above the pitch. Most of them felt uneasy and kept looking around for any signs of danger. Many of the players weren't on the pitch today as their parents wouldn't let them.

Christina Epsom felt uneasy. Her parents said that nothing like that would never happen again. She wasn't so sure though and although she was favourite to catch the snitch she really didn't want to play.

"Tommy Snugger has the Quaffle for Hufflepuff and he's scored. That's 50-10 to Hufflepuff."

Michael Knightly looked around, he felt uneasy too. The Gryffindors were getting excited but not as much as they normally did. He didn't really have the heart to play Quidditch today. He looked onto the match and the inevitability dawned on him. Gryffindor weren't going to win the match.

Christina peered into the game from the cloud mist above. The snitch would be impossible to find in this sort of weather. The only way she could possibly catch it would be if the sun glinted off it and she just caught sight of the reflection.

"Hufflepuff are in the lead. 70-10, there really is no stopping them."

"Why did you call Lily a mudblood at breakfast?" Gemini asked her brother.

"Did I? Oh, well I expect she deserved it" he replied, not caring less.

"Siri, that's awful! She wasn't doing anything! She was just sitting there!" Gemini protested.

"Ok, well I still don't like her!"

"Sirius! She's my friend, can't you just try and like her?"

"Not when she's mean to my friends! I don't want anyone being horrible about Katie! It's well tight!"

"Fine! Would you consider being nice to her if she apologised to Katie?"

"Maybe." And that was that.

Michael caught and lost the Quaffle as Christina saw a gold glimmer in the sky. She raced towards it but Frances-Kate Tomson blocked her way. She span over the top of her broom and landed on a heap on the ground. Victor Jasons saw the snitch and raced towards it, clasping both hands around it.

Hufflepuff went wild. And that was that. Hufflepuff won the semi-finals of the Hogwart's Quidditch League.

The Gryffindors were disappointed. They had been the favourites to win after all. James and Sirius didn't say anything; they remained silent and didn't move.

"Um, Sirius, James, we have to go now, everyone is leaving now," Remus said, he was also depressed.

"Oh yeah," James said half-heartedly.

"Ok, I'm going," said Sirius.

"Sirius, what about your trousers?" James asked.

"Oh yeah, my trousers," said Sirius, with no expression in his voice whatsoever.

"Maybe no one will notice if we all walk behind you," said Remus.

"Yeah, maybe not," said Sirius.

"We have to go now, or we'll be left behind," said Gemini, looking at the almost empty stalls. They all nodded and got up, Sirius went ahead and the others went behind him. If they'd been in the right mood they would have laughed hysterically at the sight in front of them, but they didn't.

They found Lily in the Gryffindor Common Room playing chess with Peter. All of them ignored her except Gemini who stayed behind and looked like she was going to say something, but she didn't. She just looked hurt and left.

Gemini, James and Sirius all had very similar dreams that night. About Quidditch and how they were all destined to be stars. They were famous, they were part of the England squad and everyone loved them. Gemini and James were Chasers and were amazing at what they did. Sirius was a Beater, vicious and quick.

All three woke up feeling happy and knew that they were destined to be stars. They all decided to train hard and join the team as soon as possible. They would be on the Gryffindor team and they would win the cup!

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	23. Chapter 23

A/N: Thanks again to everyone!!! You rock!!!

Chapter 24

Lessons went on as normal. When they did weekly assignments and the marks came back it showed that all of the students did well in their lessons. Except Peter. He just couldn't seem to learn anything. It all just went in one ear and out the other. He always came bottom of the class.

James was exceptionally good at transfiguration; there wasn't a spell that they had done so far that he couldn't do. Pins into pencils, colour changes and everything.

Lily was best at charms, even if she didn't get off to a very good start she was well on her way now. It was the easiest lesson for her. There was something about it that she could just…do, she couldn't explain it. She could do the theory side, that was simple but what surprised her most was the fact that she could also do the practical side. She didn't expect to have much confidence when she first arrived at the school. Which was why she didn't really do very well at first. But as soon as she warmed into it she was fine with it.

Sirius and Katie seemed to get good marks in most lessons and they mucked about most of the time. Gemini got good marks as well but she really worked hard for them.

Lily had made her revision timetable already. It was before Easter and she'd already started revising. She was revising an hour a night as well as homework. Socialising had been completely cut out of her schedule. She also spent a lot of time with Peter now, so that might be why.

Peter still went on about James though, which really annoyed Lily. He never said a bad word about him. He went on about how amazing James was, and how sorry he was and how he wished James would accept his apology and let them be friends again.

Lily pointed out that James was never his friend in the first place.

Now Lily didn't have any friends at all.

This was when her depression started. She was alone, among people that she'd only met months ago and in a whole new world that she wasn't used to. Yes the teachers still liked her, and yes, they talked to her and wanted her to share her problems with them so that they could help. But that wasn't enough.

She wanted friends. Real friends. Friends like she used to do at Whinging Primary. Friends like Pip and Kate and Arabella. Arabella Figg, her former best friend, was odd. The oddest girl at her old school. She used to hang around with Lily and claim that she was her best friend. After time Lily started to believe this and eventually it was true.

Arabella had got a bit annoying at times. Like when she jumped and remarked that she looked like a frog or when she called people 'poor child.' Lily remembered a particular incident when Arabella had randomly said; out of nowhere that 'swans don't make a noise until they die!' She really was weird!

Lily was walking along the corridor on her way back to the Common Room after Herbology one day when she tripped up and landed on her face. She was just walking along, reading her revision timetable and seeing what she had to have achieved by tonight when she caught her foot on something and fell. Everything she was holding fell everywhere. She looked back to see what she had tripped over and she found it, or should I say him, straight away.

"Snape? What do you want?" she asked, gathering in all her stuff.

"To talk to you, of course mudblood!" he said and some Slytherins around him laughed.

Lily didn't know what he was talking about, "What's a mudblood?"

They laughed even harder; she had obviously proved his point somehow. He held out his hand to help her up, she took it gratefully and began to stand up, only to have him let go. She fell down, again.

"You didn't really think I was going to help a filthy little mudblood like yourself, did you?" tears filled in her eyes, "Oh you did! That is so sweet!" he said in a fake high voice, clasping his hands together. More slytherins crowded round and more slytherins laughed.

"Look at that! She's crying!"

Crying. Crying. Crying.

That one word echoed in her head over and over and over again. Crying. It wasn't her fault that her emotions sometimes overcame her. It was whoever made them happen and, and, and her parent's! For giving her that gene!

"What's happening?" came a voice from somewhere behind the crowd of slytherins.

"Yeah, let us pass!" came another.

The slytherins jeered and pointed at Lily as she sat helplessly on the ground. Snape stood at the front and they all pressured him to make fun of her more. He looked rather uneasy; he'd obviously not wanted it to go this far. He just wanted it to be a little joke, he didn't want to torture someone like this, he might be evil, but not that evil.

"Oh my god, Evans! What are they doing to you?" said the voice from the back.

"Potter?" she said in astonishment.

"Yeah, and Sirius' here as well!" came James' voice.

Snape looked scared, he tried to escape but the Slytherins were still urging him to make Lily mad. They forced him to the front no matter how hard he tried to escape.

"I'm fine Potter! I don't need your help!" the Slytherins roared. "It's true! I was perfectly fine before they came along!" she said, addressing no one in particular.

"What are you on? Can you see yourself?" James cried from somewhere near the back of the crowd.

"I'm perfectly capable of looking after myself!" she said, picking up her things and standing up but the looming crowd of green and silver made her fall back down again.

"Well if you don't need our help then me and Sirius will just leave…" James said.

"NO! POTTER DON'T YOU DARE LEAVE!" she shouted.

Sirius and James laughed and barged through the crowd. They caught Lily, one on each arm and dragged her off. Sirius fired random spells at the Slytherins and they ran into someone and fell over in a heap.

"Tsk tsk tsk, what have we got here? A Black, a Potter and their girlfriend disturbing the peace and quiet of the Hogwart's halls. It won't do, it really won't do. And to do it in front of me and to my own house. I think that detentions are in order here." Professor Kondola said in his icy voice.

"But Professor! Didn't you see what they were doing to poor Evans?" said Potter.

"They weren't doing anything to me! I was perfectly fine!" Lily said angrily.

"Exactly," said Professor Kondola, "You three just barged in their and started bullying pupils from my house!"

"THREE?" screeched Lily.

"Miss Evans, I must kindly ask you not to burst my eardrums. I did indeed say 'three' as in the three people who are lying on the floor in front of me."

"That is so unfair!" Lily murmured.

"What was that Miss Evans? I don't think that it was remotely unfair!"

Lily was amazed, did he have super hearing or something? She looked around to see who else had seen the whole fiasco with Kondola. She saw the Slytherins looking on eagerly, a couple of Ravenclaws who were laughing and… She had to look again to make sure she wasn't dreaming. Sure enough, Professor Dreamstone was stood there smiling to herself.

"Professor!" Lily called out in surprise.

"Miss Evans," said Professor Dreamstone acknowledging her.

Professor Kondola's eyes widened and he span around. "Ingrid," he said nastily, "how nice of you to come and see three of your student being put in detention.

"But what you didn't realise Sabre, is that I saw the whole thing. You will not put these students into detention and you will come with me now to Albus' office where you will face an inquiry." She smirked.

"You can't prove that I did anything!" he laughed.

"Can't I?" she said dangerously and left with him following in tow.

"Well that was…weird!" said Sirius, pulling himself off the floor.

"Yup, can't believe that she didn't say something sooner though," James said, standing up. They both held out their hands like perfect gentlemen to help Lily up. She just looked in disgust, stood herself up and left.

"Friendly!" said James sarcastically.

"Ah well, can't please them all can you Jamie boy!" Sirius laughed, clapping his friend on the back. "Now let's go prank some Slytherins!"


	24. Chapter 24

A/N: I am determined to finish all my fanfics this holiday and THEN start that french homework!

Chapter 24 

The sun outside was shining brightly on the crisp June morning, birds danced merrily in the sky, warbling tuneful praises to the day. The students of Hogwarts school bustled around, finding friends from other houses and counting their money, today was the last Hogsmeade trip of the year and it was going to be worth it.

"It's not fair!" sighed Sirius, slumping on the floor in the Gryffindor Common Room, as there were no seats available. "Why don't we get to go to Hogsmeade? I want to spend all my money!"

"You could have asked someone to buy stuff for you," said Remus in a know-it-all voice from the sofa.

"Where's the fun in that?" asked Sirius, disbelievingly, "I need to get out of this building, it's doing my head in!"

"Do you want to go outside, Siri? And play Quidditch?" James asked from next to Remus, he too was bored out of his skull.

"Yeh ok," said Sirius, jumping up and heading towards his dormitory to collect his broom.

"Hang on," said Katie, "How are you going to play Quidditch with two people?"

Sirius and James looked at each other before turning back to Katie, "Penalty Shoot out Quidditch" grinned James, "Best game in the world!" added Sirius.

"OK, if you say so" said Katie, turning back to her game of noughts and crosses with Gemini, "We'll be out in a bit after I just beat…..oh my god Gemini Black! How did you manage that? Can you believe it, she's beaten me again!" Remus watched on and smiled to himself, he watched the whole game where Gemini had been jinxing the game but he wasn't going to say anything, it was a trait you picked up after being friends with James Potter and Sirius Black.

James and Sirius collected their brooms and scrambled through the portrait hall. They ran down the stairs, eager to get out into the fresh air but the stairs took an unexpected turning and landed the boys on an unknown corridor.

"Where are we?" said Sirius but was quickly silenced by James.

"Shhh for a minute will you?" James whispered to his friend, "I can hear voices!" The two boys tiptoed down the corridor, being careful to stick near the walls, they looked round the corner and sure enough there were two boys, most likely seventh years judging by the size of them, talking by a rather unusual statue.

"Billy, don't you think we better show someone where this passage is?" the smaller of the two boys whispered to the other.

"No! Why should we?" the other boy whispered back.

"Well if we keep this to ourselves, no one is ever going to find it ever again! We were told in our first year so surely we should pass the message on?" the first boy whispered getting quite insistent.

James and Sirius turned to face each other, they were both curious as to where the passage lead and were determined to find out, they looked back around the corner.

"Judd we can't just go telling anyone you know! What if they went and told Dumbledore or something? We'd be in so much trouble!" the second boy whispered, his voice getting slightly louder.

"James," Sirius whispered poking his friend in the back, "James, I've got to sneeze, really badly! What do I do?"

"Hold it in, we'll be gone soon, I just need to find out where this passageway goes to!" James whispered back, shrugging off his friend's arm.

"We'll find someone Billy I promise! But we really should do it soon, we have to show up in Hogsmeade you know!" the first boy said.

"James, James I really have to sneeze, I can't hold it in much longer. James my eyes are watering!" Sirius whispered.

"Hogsmeade Siri! This passage goes to Hogsmeade!" James whispered back, ignoring the urgency of his friend.

"James I think I'm going to explode if I don't AAAAAAAAAATICHOOOOOOOOO!" Sirius sneezed really loudly and it echoed off the walls and ricocheted off the ceiling.

"SIRIUS!" James whispered.

"Who's there?" the first boy said. It was the first time James had seen the boy's faces and now he recognised them. They were seventh year Ravenclaws, well known for their attitudes, they were forever in trouble with some teacher or another.

"Sirius, what do we do now?" James whispered.

"Show yourselves!" demanded the second boy.

"Let's just do what they say!" said Sirius marching out from around the corner, dragging James alongside him. "Hi! I'm Sirius Black and this is James Potter, we were just on our way to play Quidditch when the staircase brought us here!"

"How much of it did you hear?" asked the second boy.

"Quite a lot of it I'm afraid" admitted James "We know that somewhere round here is a secret passageway to Hogsmeade and that you need to tell someone about it."

"Wait," said the first boy, "are you the two boys that nearly got old Kondola fired?"

"Yeah!" beamed Sirius, "That would be us!"

The two older boys whispered among themselves for a minute before turning back to the two first years.

"Well boys, today is your lucky day!" said the first boy, "I'm Judd and this is Billy and we're going to show you how to get into Hogsmeade without having to pass any teachers!"

"It's easy," said Billy, "All you do it find your way here to the statue of the one eyed witch, tap her hunchback and say 'dissendium' like this…" the boy gave a demonstration and at once the hump opened up and revealed a fairly narrow passageway. "Follow this passageway and you'll find yourselves in the cellar at Honeyduke's and then you're free to roam around as you please!"

"You can come with us now if you want," added Judd. James and Sirius agreed with wide eyes and gobsmacked faces. This was a dream come true and they weren't going to miss anything.

Several hours later James and Sirius strolled back into the Gryffindor Common Room with overflowing bags of sweets, they settled themselves down on either arm of the chair which Gemini and Katie were squashed into.

"And where have you two been?" demanded Katie, helping herself to a Bertie Bott's Bean. There was a moments pause before she added, "and where on Earth did you get all these sweets?"

"We've been to Honeyduke's" stated Sirius, shoving sweets into his mouth, not caring what they were.

"No you haven't," said Gemini breaking off a piece of Sirius' chocolate bar.

"Yes we have!" insisted James. "We found a secret passageway!"

"But we're not saying where!" added Sirius.

"Good idea mate!" grinned James, "We don't want everyone knowing!"

"Tell me! Please tell me! I want to know!" pleaded Katie as she wanted to be part of the fun and didn't like feeling left out.

"Erm, let me think….no!" said Sirius laughing.

"Maybe when you're older," said James, patting Katie on the head in a patronising manner.

"Fine! But I will find out one day!" said Katie, stealing James' bag of sweets and running out of the Common Room.

"Bye guys!" said James, "Just going to get my sweets back," he added climbing through the portrait hole, "shan't be a minute!"

Sirius slid into the chair next to Gemini as they laughed and stuffed their faces with sweets.

A/N: go on, who knows where the names Billy and Judd are from! They're from a book, which apparently ALL yorkshire people should have read! lol


	25. Chapter 25

A/N: right, well nearly there, only 6 more chapters to write!

Chapter 25

"I can't believe you're so young Remmie dude," said Sirius lazily one evening in the middle of June. The three first year boys, James, Sirius and Remus were 'doing their homework' by the lake. Only Remus was actually doing his homework.

"I'm not that young," said Remus looking up from his History of Magic essay on ancient Egyptian wizards, "I'm sure there are loads of people younger than me here." As soon as he'd finished speaking he continued to scribble away.

"Name someone," said James who was skimming stones across the lake, he could only do this safely at the moment as the squid was rather preoccupied with some fifth years who were feeding it bread.

"Well, I can't think of anyone right now," said Remus, once again moving away from his essay to talk to the other two.

"Hah! Exactly!" laughed Sirius, "I bet you're the youngest person in our year!"

"I won't be" said Remus, looking up but continuing to write, "I'm sure there are people who have their birthday in July and August. It would be so weird to have you're birthday at the end of July though, you would only just get into this year, otherwise you'd be in the year below."

"Yeah, that would be weird, but you would seem really old to the people in the year below," said James, looking for another flat rock.

"Yeah, that would be pretty cool," Sirius chipped in, "You'd be able to boss them around and everything!"

"Well I was thinking that they might come to you for advice, but whatever" said Remus, talking to Sirius face to face but continuing to write.

"Remus can you either write or talk to me! Don't do both it's creeping me out! What are you a woman or something?" Sirius said taking Remus' quill out of his hand and throwing it behind him.

Remus got up to collect his quill and asked Sirius what he was talking about, James told him that Sirius was just jealous of his ability to multitask.

"So then, Remmie dude…" Sirius started but was interrupted by Remus, "Can you not call me that, my name is REMUS not REMMIE!"

"Fine! So, what are we going to do for your party?" Sirius continued.

"Oh you don't have to do anything, I'm just glad it doesn't land on the full moon this year…." Remus stopped suddenly and blushed.

"Care to elaborate?" asked James looking interested for the first time.

"No, I'm ok!" squeaked Remus.

"Well," said Sirius still looking intently at Remus, "I was thinking that me and Jamsie boy here could slip into Hogsmeade and get supplies and have a big party in the dormitory or something"

"Cool idea Siri. We could have it just us three!" said James.

"We have to invite Andrew, and Katie and Gem as well though," said Sirius, looking pretty serious.

"Well, yeah that goes without saying!" laughed James, "but what are we going to do about Evans and Pettigrew, if they find out they're bound to tell on us, stupid tell tales!"

Sirius thought for a minute before saying, "We'll just have to make sure they have somewhere else to go."

"Like where?" asked Remus incredulously.

"Like……a book reading club!" said Sirius, looking proud of himself.

"There's a book reading club?" asked Remus "Why did no one tell me?"

"There isn't really a book reading club, we're just going to say there is to get rid of them!" said James, looking at surprised at how slow his clever friend could be.

"Ahh right, good idea! But when you go to Hogsmeade, don't get caught!" said Remus.

Later that evening in the common room James and Sirius were pushing Remus over towards Lily and Peter who were playing chess at a small table, away from everyone else.

"I don't get why I have to go over there guys!" hissed Remus.

"Like they're going to believe that either me or Sirius is going to go to a book club!" laughed James giving Remus a final shove.

"Hi Lily, Peter" Remus greeted them, nodding to each in turn. "I just thought I'd tell you that there's going to be a book reading club starting next Tuesday in the Transfiguration classroom and I was wondering whether you wanted to go?"

"Wow, Remus, yeah, that would be great!" said Lily amazed that someone was talking to her, "We'd love to go, wouldn't we Peter?"

"I suppose so. Will James be there?" he asked hopefully.

"Erm, yeah! He will! So see you there next Tuesday then. We're going to decided on a book list then" Remus said and paused for a minute, "Ok bye then!" he said and rushed off back to his friends.

"Did they buy it?" asked James earnestly.

"Every word!" grinned Remus, "You guys have well and truly corrupted me you know!"

"Not quite Remmie, not quite!" laughed Sirius.

A week later in the first year girls' dormitory Lily couldn't understand why everyone she asked about the book club had either never heard of it or had too much homework, she was told personally and she hadn't had homework for weeks, just revision for the end of year exams.

"Anna, are you sure you don't want to go to the book club with me?" Lily asked one last time to make sure.

"Yeah, I do love reading but I have this astronomy homework that just can't wait," Anna lied, trying her best not to give anything away, she would feel safe as soon as she was in the boys' dormitory at Remus' party.

"But we didn't get any astronomy homework!" said Lily, astounded.

"Oh yeah, well, this is extra credit work!" Anna managed to stammer out.

Lily looked stumped as Anna didn't seem the type to ask for extra work but she looked pretty certain as to what she was doing so she just left and made her way down to the transfiguration room by herself. She slowly walked along, thinking to herself about the turnabout in the year. At the beginning of the year she had plenty of friends and a best friend but now she had no one, except Peter but he didn't really like her, he was just in the same situation as she was.

Lily reached the classroom after about five minutes of meandering along the corridors. She found it empty and sat down and waited for everyone the turn up, Peter arrived after about ten minutes and apologised for not being able to make it as he had to help Professor Dreamstone with some marking so Lily sat alone in the dark classroom and waited, and waited and waited.

"Right, so me and Sirius…" started James but was interrupted by Katie clearing her throat, "oh right, and Katie, are going to go to Hogsmeade and by sweets and butterbeer and the rest of you stay here and GET THIS PARTY STARTED!" There was a loud cheer from the majority of the Gryffindor first year and James, Sirius and Katie left the dormitory.

"Come on you guys, we've got to be quick and we can't be seen! Alright?" said James to his companions who nodded dutifully. They found their way, eventually, back to the statue of the one eyed witch and found their way into the cellar of Honeyduke's. Katie was wide eyed with wonder as they stepped into the shop, she'd never seen so many sweets before.

"Right," said James, who was the self elected leader of the mission, "we buy as many sweets as possible with the money we've been given then we make our way to the Three Broomsticks to buy butterbeer!" once again the other two nodded in agreement.

Lily sat in the dark, by herself wondering what she would do if the next six years of her life were to be anything like this one. Would she ever make any more friends? Was there the possibility that she could make friends with people in other houses? Or were they already in set groups? She would have to wait and see and if things got worse there was always the option of dropping out and returning to normal school with her sister.

"Why are they taking so long with the food?" asked Gemini, her stomach grumbling.

"What if they've been caught?" asked Sarah.

"They won't have been caught!" laughed Anna, "They're way to smart!"

"Anna, they're not that smart, Sirius couldn't even spell 'rabbit'" said Sarah seriously.

"Ok, well they're not smart in a traditional, academic sense but they're good at pranks, right?" Anna replied, Gemini and Remus nodded in agreement.

"Ok men!" said James, Katie looked and him, "Fine! Ok man and woman! We're going to proceed to the Three Broomsticks now, make sure we don't get…." But before he could finish they were interrupted by a loud cry of "MR POTTER! WHAT ON EARTH DO YOU THINK YOU ARE DOING?"

"Oh no!" cried Sirius "It's Dreamstone!"

"What? I thought she was marking tonight, with Peter, that's what he said!" said Katie, beginning to panic.

"Oh the little sneak! Why when I catch him I will…" started James but decided to run and hide and think about that later. The three twelve year olds ran as fast as their legs would carry them into an old wooden building.

"I think we lost them," Sirius managed to say through gasps of breath.

"Yeah, thank god! We're going to be so dead when we get back up to school though!" James said, looking around, "Where are we?" he added as an after note.

"Oh no!" said Katie, turning pale, "I think we're in the Shrieking Shack!"

"THE WHAT?" asked Sirius and James at the same time, not liking the look on Katie's face.

"The Shrieking Shack, my brother told me all about it, apparently it's haunted!" she whispered to the others, they all turned around to see the battered, shabby room and stared in horror.


	26. Chapter 26

Chapter 26

Lily felt the warm tears trickle down her cheeks, just a few at first but then they came thick and fast. She'd had enough, James and Sirius' pranking had gone far enough and now they'd dragged Remus into it too and possibly Peter, her only friend. She wiped the tears off her face with the back of her hand and stormed out of the room and up to the Common Room, she was going to give them a rather large piece of her mind.

"Something has to be wrong now Anna," Sarah said looking at the clock, "they've been gone fifty minutes, they said it would take twenty!"

"Ok, I agree with you now, something is definitely wrong!" said Anna, looking worried.

"There's only one thing for it! We've got to go after them!" Gemini said couragously, but was replied with answers of "No way!" "I don't think so" and "You've got to be kidding!"

"Fine!" said Gemini, "I'll go alone!" she said and with that grabbed her cloak and left the room. On her way out she bumped into Lily, "Lily you have to come with me, something is wrong!"

"What's wrong? The fact that you tricked me into going to a club that didn't exist, where is James Potter? He is a dead man!" Lily screamed.

"Woah, Lily, calm down! I'll explain everything on the way there, we're all really sorry! But you have to help me!" Gemini pleaded. Lily looked at her, trying to see whether it was just another prank but realised from the sincerity of her former friend that it wasn't and followed her.

"Where are we going?" asked Lily when they reached the staircase.

"To Hogsmeade" replied Gemini.

"What are we going to do?" asked Katie, "If we go out there we're going to be caught and if we stay in here…… I don't want to think what might happen."

"Well, it might help if we had some light," suggested Sirius, reaching for his wand, "L..L…Lumos" he said but because he wasn't concentrating the flame shocked him and he dropped his wand. The effect was instantaneous. The fire sped along the old oak floor and covered the old curtains with dancing flames.

The children were surrounded, out of their depth. They didn't know what to do so they just panicked and started screaming for help at the top of their voices. But because they were out of sight from the rest of the town nobody could hear them and the fire wasn't big enough to be seen so they remained unnoticed.

"Erm, dissendium" said Gemini tapping the back of the statue of the witch. Immediately the gap opened up, she slipped through but wasn't followed. She turned back, Lily looked very uncertain, "Come on Lily! We have to help! We are Gryffindors after all!" and with that the two girls plunged into the darkness and out of the school.

"I don't see them!" said Gemini madly looking around Honeyduke's, "maybe they'd already left, let's go outside!" The girls ran out of the shop and into the darkening street, no one. "They have to be around here somewhere!" said Gemini a sense of urgency appearing in her voice.

"There!" said Lily, pointing to the ground. "There was some sort of scuffle here and there's beans on the ground, maybe they were chased or something!" Lily looked around and sure enough there were more beans, "We should follow them!" she finished decidedly.

"But they leave the town!" said Gemini.

"Yes but Gemini, we are Gryffindors!" Lily smiled and together they ran out of the town and into the hills.


	27. Chapter 27

Chapter 27

"HELP! PLEASE! SOMEBODY! HELP US PLEASE!" Katie screamed, she didn't want to die like this. The flames were edging closer around her and the boys.

"Don't worry Katie, we're not going to die," said James putting his arm round her for support, "We're going to get out of this, we have to!"

"HELP! WE'RE ALL GOING TO DIE!" screamed Sirius, who was panicking and about to have a panic attack.

"SIRIUS?" came a voice from somewhere outside.

"MUM?" Sirius answered back.

"NO YOU IDIOT! IT'S GEMINI! I'LL GO FIND HELP IN THE TOWN! LILY WILL STAY HERE!" she yelled back and made her way back down to Hogsmeade.

"EVANS?" James yelled.

"YES?" she yelled back.

"THANK YOU!" he yelled back. Lily was so touched that she forgot her previous anger and started trying to remember spells that put out fire, Remus would have known what to do in this situation. She edged closer to the fire, terrified but determined.

As Lily got closer she felt something move, she looked down and the necklace that her grandmother had given her for Christmas had lit up. She moved closer and the light began to encircle her whole body.

She was nervous but her instinct told her to reach out into the fire. She did and it simply moved away, the necklace had created some sort of force field around her that didn't allow the fire to harm her.

Lily ran inside the burning building and located the three victims who were trapped inside, they were wide eyed with shock as she rushed through, covered with a blue light.

"Erm, if we all hold hands I think that this light stuff should protect us all" Lily said, she grabbed hold of James and sure enough he became coated. Lily led the way out of the building and onto the hillside where they were greeted by Gemini, Professor Dreamstone and half the population of Hogsmeade. They collapsed in a heap on the ground, gasping for breath when Professor Dreamstone began to talk.

"I don't want to hear excuses now but, back up to the castle, all of you!" No one argued but simply followed, their heads bowed in shame.

"Thanks again" James whispered to Lily.

"No problem" she answered and smiled back.

When they reached the castle they were all sent to bed and were told that they would be dealt with in the morning. All five children were shattered after their ordeal and did as they were told except Lily couldn't sleep. She lay in bed staring at the necklace on her bedside table. It glistened in the moonlight but there didn't seem to be anything magical about it.

Lily reached out to pick it up but dropped it on the floor. She looked around and hoped the noise hadn't woken anybody up, it hadn't the other girls were still just a mound in the duvet steadily moving up and down.

Lily went to pick up the necklace when she noticed that the back had sprung open and a note had fallen onto the carpet. She unfolded the tiny piece of paper and read:

Dear Lily my dearest granddaughter,

I don't know when it will be when you read this and whether I will still be alive so I shall explain everything now. If I have given you this necklace it means that you are a witch, close your mouth Lily, you look like a goldfish!

Yes it's true, I do know about the magical world but I could never be part of it and that is because I am a squib. A squib is a person who has magical parents but is unable to do magic themselves. My mother, who was a very good witch gave me this necklace to give to the next witch in our family, if there ever was one and if not, to keep it a secret.

This necklace will protect you from danger, all types of muggle danger and magical danger. Wear this necklace and I will know you are safe.

Love from

Grandmother Ruth

Lily blinked and read the message again, it couldn't be true, could it? She carefully placed the necklace down again, put the note back inside it and went to sleep thinking about the night's events.


	28. Chapter 28

Chapter 28 

The fire at the Shrieking Shack didn't stay secret for long. Within a day the whole school was discussing it but there were some people who didn't think it was that great. Like the Slytherins who thought that the Gryffindors were just looking for attention and the Gryffindors themselves, who got themselves detentions until the end of term.

One evening at dinner just as Sirius, James, Katie, Lily and Gemini were about to go to detention Dumbledore said that he had an announcement.

"Students, students can I have your attention for a moment?" he asked.

"Come on guys" said Katie, "We've got detention with Kondola tonight, he'll kill us if we're late!" The others agreed and left the table and headed towards the dungeons.

"I am afraid we have a little predicament in the school this evening and would very much like it if all students could go to their houses and stay there please for the course of the evening" Dumbledore said calmly, but he was the only one that was calm.

Students rushed around whilst prefects desperately tried to get them to go to their common rooms. Chaos ensued and people filled the staircases trying to reach their houses first, not wanting to be left behind.

Thunder rumbled and lightning cracked outside and students screamed and fainted, having to be dragged along by their friends so as not to be trampled in the stampede.

"Wonder what all that noise is about?" said Sirius, looking up from scrubbing his cauldron. "Its sounds like the whole of Slytherin marching along to their form room, loud animals!" he laughed not realising the irony in what he'd just said.

Soon all was dead and the five students were busy scrubbing their cauldrons in silence as to attempt to get the job done faster. Moonlight streamed through the windows from the crescent moon outside which seemed unusually bright and slightly red in colour.

The bristles on pewter filled the dungeon and made any other noise seem exaggerated which was fortunate as it meant that the children heard the footsteps in the corridor outside.

"What's that?" Katie asked but the others told her to be quiet so they could listen.

"It's all going to plan my lord, yes! They really think I'm him, bizarre isn't it! No, they all think I'm reviewing the Siren Songsters tonight, no one suspects me. Ah, our old common room, still as it always was! Hogwarts will go down tonight!"

The students gasped and James looked through the keyhole in the door just in time to see Dumbledore walking past and back up the stairs. James waited for him to be completely out of sight before saying "Who was that? Because it definitely wasn't Dumbledore!"

"Siren Songsters?" Lily asked, "Who are they?"

"They're a new band" replied Gemini, "Quite good actually, but I'll have to wait for Cat Star's review before I buy the album, she's going to their gig in London isn't she?"

"Yeah, I so wish I was going!" said Katie dreamily, "That bass player is lovely!"

"I tell you who's going to that!" said Sirius, "Elaine Tang, our loving prefect!" he laughed.

"Hey," said James looking worried, "Isn't that gig tonight?" the others thought about it before nodding, "You don't suppose that the fake Dumbledore could be Cat Star do you?"

"Then where's Dumbledore?" asked Gemini, looking puzzled.

"No idea, but best place to start is his office!" said Sirius.


	29. Chapter 29

Chapter 29

James and Sirius lead the way through school, it was just typical that they would be stuck at the lowest point in school needing to get to one of the highest.

They kept close to the walls and listened acutely for any noise, sliding across the floors as they had taken off their shoes to make them quieter. They felt a lot safer after they passed the great hall as they knew that that was where the impostor was waiting, waiting to announce someone's return into the wizarding world and rule by terror. This is all the children had picked up from the fake Dumbledore's rambling.

They slipped up the stairs, literally, and ended up outside Dumbledore's office.

"Ok," said Lily, "Who knows the password?" the others looked at each other stumped. "Oh you are kidding me! You're up here enough times all of you! Don't you listen in?"

"No, we're more interested in how to get out of the mess we just put ourselves in!" said James bitterly.

"Pssst!" came a noise from behind them, they all turned around and saw Remus Lupin coming towards them. "Guys! It's Cat Star isn't it! She was stood outside the school when I…I mean when that attack happened! Oh and the password is 'butterbeer'" at once the stairway appeared behind the statue.

"Dude! How did you know that?" Sirius asked amazed.

"I overheard Dreamstone say it once when I was up here on some…business" Remus answered, rather shiftily and Sirius decided to leave it.

James lead the way up the stairs and they burst into Dumbledore's study, there was no one there.

"Oh you are joking!" said Katie, "It's empty!"

At that moment they heard a scuffle coming from one of the cabinets, James rushed over and flung open the doors to find that Dumbledore had been shoved in there with his hands bound and his mouth gagged. He wriggled his way out and stood up. James went to untie his hands but Dumbledore stopped him and mumbled something to him.

"I don't understand what you're saying sir!" said James desperately.

"James I think he's bound by magic, erm….let me try this" said Remus stepping forward, "diffindo!" he yelled pointing his wand towards Dumbledore. In an instant the bounds were cut and fell to the floor. Remus did the same with the gag around the headteacher's mouth.

"Thank you so much!" the headmaster sighed, rubbing his wrists which had rope marks on. "I have to stop that woman before it's too late! Terrible things are afoot tonight children!" and with that he was off, his purple robes flying behind him.

James decided it would be safest if they all stayed in Dumbledore's office and waited the result there even though Sirius wanted to go off and help.

They patiently sat in a circle on the floor of the study, looking around and admiring the headmaster's collection of weird and wonderful things. The silence was unbearable, they were all itching to say something, some words of encouragement or something. Something to break the icy silence of the room and give them hope, but no words came.

Downstairs in the Great Hall Dumbledore was facing the fake Dumbledore in a one on one duel.

"Expelliarmus!" yelled Dumbledore but the other as too fast and ducked letting the spell fly over his head.

"Crucio" yelled the opposing Dumbledore, he fell to the ground. Writhing in pain with a look of sheer concentration upon his face he lay helplessly as the other Dumbledore walked over to him.

"Not to bright are we Albus, when it comes to Dark Magic. You weren't expecting that were you? Didn't think that someone could break into your little school and torture you with spells you had only heard about through scary stories!"

The mask was fading, the grey beard dissolved and was replaced with blonde, silky locks, the posture changed and a woman with dazzling beauty stood in his place.

"Did you know it was me or not? I'm guessing by the rather smug look on your face that you did! Yes Albus it's been me all along, it was me that turned you all to wax and blew apart your precious Quidditch Stadium! And I am merely aiding my master who will take over this world and rule every sign of life upon it!" Cat Star said mockingly over his curled up figure on the ground.

"And do you know who that is Dumbly Wubly Snore? Tom Marvolo Riddle! You always said he would do great things! And you were right! The first great thing he will do is to get rid of you!" she flung her head back and laughed harder than she'd ever done before. But it was a laugh full of malice and evil and it gave Dumbledore chance to knock her over and pin her to the ground.

"Catherine, my dear Catherine. The Minister of Magic is on his way and he should be arriving in 3…2…1…"

"ALBUS! Where is she? Oh I see you've found her!" said Derek Bangtoruble, the Minister of Magic. "We'll take it from here thank you!" Aurors rushed over and grabbed her, forcing her arms behind her back.

"See you in Azkaban Catherine!" said Albus picking himself up off the floor and smiling to himself.

"Evilarsonus!" Cat Star yelled before they silenced her and dragged her off the school grounds.

"HE WILL RISE AND YOU WILL BE LEFT WEAK AND POWERLESS DUMBLEDORE! AGAINST HIM YOU WILL DIE! HE ALREADY HAS POWERFUL AND LOYAL SUPPORTERS! YOU DO NOT STAND A CHANCE! THE WIZARDING WORLD BELONGS TO HIM!"

The voice echoed through the school loud and clear yet soft and feminine at the same time. The thunder and lightning outside had faded to a light drizzle and any candle that had been blown out due to the raging wind was brought back to life.

"Cat Star" whispered Remus to the rest of the group.


	30. Chapter 30

Chapter 30

It was announced the next day that exams for all years apart from fifth and seventh were cancelled due to the dramatic events of the previous evening. Dumbledore insisted he was fine so the Ministry agreed to keep Hogwarts open as usual.

The rest of the term flew by for the first years who had nothing to do apart from attend classes which were just revision of their past year, there was no real work to be done.

Lily made up with Gemini and they became best friends once again but Katie wouldn't forgive her. She said that there were too many hurtful, one-sided arguments for her to forgive and forget.

Katie spent the rest of the term hanging around with James, Sirius and Remus as they were more fun than Gemini anyway, who wasn't open to as many stupid pranks as they were.

James and Sirius decided to play one last prank on the Slytherins and waited until they were on the train on the way home to play it. The mission was called 'Operation Soaking Slytherins' and involved James, Sirius, Remus and Katie bursting into Snape's compartment with plenty of water bombs and soaking them then sealing their compartment for long enough for them to run away.

The plan was going smoothly, the train was chugging along nicely and James had located the enemy's compartment. Sirius was filling up the water bombs with a flick of a wand, a handy spell that Remus had taught him and Katie was keeping lookout, a job that she was not too happy about, she wanted to be in on the action.

They snuck along the corridors until they were outside the Slytherin's compartment.

"NOW!" yelled Sirius and they burst in throwing the water bombs in every direction. "OUT MEN OUT!" he yelled when all the water bombs were used. The Slytherins were fuming and coming towards the door.

"Remus do your stuff!" James said.

"Colloportus!" he said and sealed the door. They were laughing among themselves, watching the Slytherins threats and attempts to escape but just as they were about to turn around they heard "SURPRISE!" and Lily and Gemini threw water bombs at them and ran as fast as they could.

"COME BACK HERE RIGHT NOW!" Sirius yelled and chased after them. They eventually all calmed down and made up and sitting together in a compartment they ate chocolate frogs and reflected over the madness that was their first year at school.

"Well bye then Gemini, I'll write to you in the holidays!" said Lily walking off with her parents and sister who had come to collect her.

"Yeah bye guys" yelled Katie running to meet he dad who refused to come out of his car.

"Mum!" cried Remus running up and hugging a woman with sandy coloured hair round the waist. "Bye guys see you in the holidays sometime!"

"Yeah bye Remmie!" said Sirius after him.

"It's REMUS!" yelled Remus not looking back.

"So then Sirius I guess this is it then! Bye! Have fun at Grimmauld Place! I'll come and rescue you at some point!" James said.

"Yeah bye mate! Come on Gem we better get goin!" Sirius said and left the station.

"Come on mum, time to go home!" said James now that his friends had all left.

"Did you have a good year sweetie?" his mum asked.

"Yeah mum, I can't wait for next year!"


End file.
